Long Roads
by kittenkatpaw
Summary: Life on the Strip is simple. Happy. Is it a crime for the courier to be content? The world apparently thinks it is, as all of Honor's roads seem to end up taking her back to those two little bullets Benny put through her brain, and the past they wiped out. ***It's done, folks- last two chapters are up.***
1. Chapter 1

Benny frowned at the glittering trinket the merchant held out to him. "Have anything fancier? Shinier?"

Beside him, Tony sighed loudly. "Boss, you could signal vertibirds down with that thing. Ain't it enough?"

Benny ignored him. "Got anything like that? I need this to say..." He trailed off. When he was sweet talking his pussycat, the patter just rolled off a silver tongue. Trying to articulate actual emotions to someone who wasn't his Honor, now, that was tough.

The merchant grinned at him, but her eyes were wistful. "It needs to say, 'My man thinks I'm the best woman in the world.'"

Benny smiled back. "The _only_ woman in the world." Tony sighed again, even more loudly this time. Benny ignored him again.

The woman helping him didn't notice or chose to ignore Tony as well, simply placing the bit of jewelry aside and turning to the safe in the wall. The protectrons at the door perked up and focused on them, but Benny had no intention of busting the place up. No, he was strictly legit now, had been since he got back from Legion captivity. His baby was legit, or at least mostly, as far as they knew; the least, the _very_ least, he could do for her was try to live up to her own standards...to her _name_, for chrissakes.

And try to shower her with gifts that expressed how he felt about her. Which was kind of impossible.

The woman turned back around, holding up a ring with a small jewel that glittered in the beam of sunlight through the window and cast tiny rainbows across the counter. The jewel might be small, but the light casting through it was showy, over the top for the wasteland. So in Benny's opinion it was perfect.

He didn't bother asking the price. This was for his baby; price was irrelevant. He paid what she asked without question and slipped the carefully wrapped bundle into his pocket. Tony sighed again but held his tongue- until they left the store.

"Why you spendin' such a fortune on that dame, Boss? That bitch is colder than a lakelurk's balls."

Benny laughed at the boy's scowl, which only made the kid redden and scowl all the more. Tony had resented Honor from the moment she'd broken his nose and knocked him on his ass in front of Swank, Louie, and about two dozen gamblers. Benny recalled the moment with a lot more fondness than Tony did; the kid had been put on duty at reception, responsible for frisking incomers for weapons, and he'd let someone through with a sawed-off. Honor had spotted the fink, thrown him out bodily herself, and rounded on Tony. Amid much swearing and shouting ("You stupid little son of a bitch! Do you have any idea who your chief _is_ now? How many people want to kill him to take over the Strip?") Honor had, at some point during her tirade, decked the kid and sent him sprawling, nose and ego in equal pain. Benny knew some of the other Chairmen had distrusted Honor, that they saw her at best as a suspect outsider and at worst as an opportunist, but that little incident put their minds at ease. She was on the Chairmen's side, on Benny's side, and no one else's.

Of course, Tony still resented her, especially since the other guys wouldn't let him live it down.

They returned to the Tops. Still the Tops, and still his. His honey baby had taken care of Mr. House, rescued him from those Legion bastards, then tracked him down again to hand Vegas over to him, just like that. Hadn't wanted to run anything, she'd said. Done with being important. Done with being a target. Thought there was no one else capable and visionary enough to run the Strip but he. He grinned at the memory.

They stepped through the doors and into a firefight.

Swank and the others had abandoned the front desk; a suited body lay behind it but Benny didn't have a chance to check who it was. He and Tony flung themselves behind the planter behind the desk. Benny already had Maria drawn before he peered around the corner.

Lots of shouting, lots of gunfire, all of it centered around the tables between the front desk and the elevators. Three, four guys, looked like, spraying bullets out of odd-looking rifles. He'd worry about how they snuck them in later- right now he was far more concerned about his sweet pussycat who was, naturally, right in the thick of things.

The thugs had surprised her- had surprised everyone, obviously- as she wasn't wearing her armor. Instead she wore one of Benny's shirts, buttoned crookedly in three places, with her tummy, silken lingerie, and long legs bared. She held one of her favorite rifles and hammered away at the nearest thug. Other Chairmen exchanged shots with the other three, and the customers all seemed to have escaped or found shelter deeper inside the casino. Her bullets weren't making a dent in her target's armor, though, making Benny wonder what good he thought he was going to do with a pistol, and then she got a head shot that sent the back of the goon's skull flying. Benny grinned. _One more for my baby._ He waited until the thug with the best line of sight for him was distracted, then stepped out of cover and took aim.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another man, a fifth player, a pipe or club in his hand, and he was behind Honor. No one else seemed to notice him, dealing as they were with the shouting lunatics in front of them. Benny felt like he'd taken a dose of turbo that slowed the world down around him, but took him with it. He changed his aim, but too, too slow; something tugged hard at his arm, causing his shot to go wild. In the same split second Tony dropped to the floor beside him with a hole in his chest, and the fifth man brought the club down hard on the back of Honor's skull. She fell to the carpet and didn't move.

He bolted for her, suddenly unaware of the bullets flying around his head, and dropped to his knees at her side. "Pussycat, honey baby, wake up, talk to me, look at me-" All the while he gathered her in his arms, cradling her head against his chest with one hand and clenching her body against himself with the other. "Not now, not already, not like this..." He petted her face, watched for her eyes to flutter open, growing more panicked by the moment when they didn't. He became vaguely aware of people standing around him, but he couldn't stop to care whether they were the thugs or his own men. "Baby, baby, please. Open your eyes. For me. _Please._"

The rest of the world finally began to register as a rough shake of his shoulder. "Boss. _Boss_."

He spared a glance upward to see Swank and the others hovering over him. "We lost two of our boys...is she still breathing?"

Benny nodded. He wouldn't speak and risk there being a quaver in his voice; he was showing enough weakness, enough vulnerability, as it was. Swank turned to one of the others. "Get a doc, now. Fast."

Benny stayed in the floor, cradling Honor like a baby, unaware that he'd been shot himself until someone insisted that the Followers doctor look at his arm, too- the bullet that threw off his shot. The next hours he passed in a bewildered fog as the doc checked Honor over and they put her to bed. A few words floated through his haze, words already too painfully familiar, like "previous insult" and "head injury" and "brain damage." There was nothing more they could do. He sat by their bed, watching Honor not move, his elbow propped on the bedstand and cheek propped in his hand as the doctor dug into the meat of his upper arm with a pair of forceps to retrieve the slug sans med-x or stimpaks- all they'd had, he insisted go to her, for all the good it did. He watched her not move until his blood loss finally put him in the floor for Swank to find hours later.

He regained consciousness some time early the next morning. He'd been lain in bed next to her. Her hair splayed over the pillow, and he trailed his fingers through it. "Pussycat. I've been waiting for you to leave me for being a bastard. For hurting you." He caressed her cheek with his fingertips. She might as well have been a porcelain doll for the reaction he got. "And you've left me like this instead. Pussycat. What'm I supposed to do now?"


	2. Chapter 2

"For fuck's sake, I don't know what to do with two thousand pounds of goddamned brahmin steak! Whadda I look like, a fucking deathclaw? It's a mistake, right? Go deal with it." Swank resisted the urge to pop the kid on the back of his head as he bolted for the kitchen to deal with the incorrect delivery and turned instead to the mountain of invoices, spreadsheets, and messages that had fallen back on him since the new ruler of Vegas had taken himself out of the game. "Fuck." He ran his hands through his hair and stared at the mess that was starting to creep across the front desk. Where in the hell had he put that claim note from the Kings' casino? It was worth six figs in caps, and if he lost it, Benny would have his head.

He stopped himself, then snorted. Who was he kidding? Benny wouldn't notice, not with that dame of his to obsess over.

But the other Chairmen would, and all of their employees, when none of them got paid if he didn't find that goddamned claim note.

Before he even got started on the stack, a commotion at the door interrupted his panic and gave him a whole new one. A very strange party had just walked in- two women in serious combat armor (one blonde, one strawberry blonde, and both gorgeous, he noted), a distinguished man in his middle age, and a lithe, well-muscled ghoul who was easily a head taller than anyone Swank had ever seen, excepting Mean Sonofabitch. The women carried themselves like professional soldiers, NCR rangers or Brotherhood, maybe. The ghoul carried himself like a predator. And apparently, he objected to surrendering the shotgun on his back. Swank was terrified of him on mere principle, even before he placed one huge hand on the stock.

The strawberry haired woman- and Swank gave her full points for bravery- grabbed his arm and restrained him. "Remember why we're here."

The ghoul visibly composed himself, his face suddenly devoid of any emotion, though the tension in his shoulders spoke volumes.

"Besides," the blonde said now, "it's not like _you_ need a weapon to kill someone." She patted his other arm as he relinquished the shotgun and a combat dagger the length of Swank's femur to the doorman, and Swank let out his breath. He'd have to watch where these cats went, and speak to whoever ran their table; he had a hunch it would be best for everyone to ensure they had a good time.

He opened his mouth to greet them, but the blonde interrupted before he could speak. "We're looking for someone," she said, handing him a worn photo. "She has brown hair, green eyes. Her name is Honor Meservey. We were told she might be here."

He stared at the woman, then stared at the photo. Even though her hair was darker, it was unmistakably the boss' dame. "So that's her last name, huh?" Slowly, the implication of that information dawned on him. "Oh, holy _shit_. You knew her. You knew her _before._"

The ghoul spoke. "Knew her before _what_?"

Swank had feared this guy before, but the tone of his voice sent chills through him. "Uh, I think you better talk to the boss."

~#~

Sarah Lyons could hardly stand still as they waited for this "boss" to appear. An exchange of favors for favors for favors had sent Honor out west, taking a job as a courier in the place of a retired Brotherhood scribe, and when she hadn't come home they'd feared Charon was going to personally slaughter his way from one coast to the other in search of her. They'd been all the hell over the Mojave wasteland following tales and rumors of her, and Sarah knew his patience was already worn past the breaking point. She didn't know how he'd restrained himself from leaving more bodies in their wake already, and she prayed that this man had some answers. She didn't know how much longer Charon could go on, not knowing, before something snapped.

He finally appeared. He was a pretty man, almost- but not quite- too pretty for her, but he looked worn, beaten down. Everything about him spoke of weariness. His right arm, out of its sleeve beneath his jacket, was bandaged around the bicep and in a sling, so he shook hands quickly- even with Charon, without hesitation, she noted with mixed pleasure and relief- with his left. He shook her hand last, and she got a good look at him as he finished introducing himself. He had the deepest, darkest eyes she'd ever seen, startlingly intense. Luckily, Reilly and James had been nominated as the spokespeople for their little group, so she didn't have to worry about finding her voice any time soon and could just check him out instead. She'd have felt guilty about it except it also let her watch his body language as they spoke with him. Swank introduced him. "This is Benny. He runs the Tops. Well, the whole Strip, really."

Benny turned his head slightly toward Swank and the taller man fell silent. "What can I do for you?"

James had retrieved the photo from Swank and handed it to Benny. "We're looking for this woman. We were told to check here."

Benny looked down at the photo and his shoulders tensed, but his voice betrayed nothing. "Why?"

"She's my daughter," James replied, and Benny snapped his head up to look at him. "She came west to do a job for a friend, and never came home. Please, if you've seen her-"

"'A friend'?" Benny handed the photo back. "And just who is this 'friend'?"

Charon practically growled. "If you know anything, it is in your best interests to tell us."

To his credit, Benny didn't flinch. "You want to know something, I want to know something. They're both simple questions with simple answers. So, you show me yours and I'll show you mine, hey?"

Charon seemed to grow in every direction, but didn't lay a hand on the much smaller man, to Sarah's relief. But to her frustration- and just a little fear- Benny didn't back down either. He just met Charon's eyes calmly, as if he looked his impending death in the face every day with breakfast. Of course, judging by what they'd seen of the Mojave so far, that might well be the case, fancy suit or no.

Sarah spoke up to break the tension, just in case. "She was a retired scribe with the Brotherhood of Steel, a woman named Morris. It was a courier job, and she was down at the time with a broken leg. Honor agreed to do the job as a favor to my father- Morris is an old friend of his."

"Retired _out_ of the Brotherhood?" He sounded skeptical.

"Our branch of the Brotherhood...doesn't see eye to eye with the rest of the order. On many issues."

Benny relaxed marginally. "I see. Okay. Yeah, she's here. Follow me, and I'll- I'll take you to her." His voice had an odd hitch, but the tension was gone, replaced again by the weariness.

She tried not to hope that their unpleasant adventure was really almost ended; they'd hit too many dead ends and disappointments already. Charon might just kill this guy if it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The elevator ride to the 13th floor was almost unbearable. Once there Benny led them to a nicely appointed suite. "Have a seat."

Charon looked fit to burst and James said, "Please, we just want to see my daughter-"

"She's here, and you'll see her," Benny replied. "But there's something you gotta know first, and I think it'd be better if you were sitting down."

With reluctance of varying degrees, they took the offered seats. Benny remained standing, his back to a door at the rear of the room. "'Bout a week ago, we had an- incident. Some goons with break-down rifles and collapsible batons smuggled them in, figuring they'd take us by surprise. And they did.

"I don't know what Honor was like before, but she's- well, now she's the sort of gal who runs toward trouble, not away from it. It's real charming most of the time, but-" He stopped, swallowed hard, and continued as if every word were a deathclaw digging its way out of his throat. "One of them clubbed her from behind before I could stop him. There was nothing anyone..." Here he trailed off, and didn't seem inclined to continue.

"But she's alive, yes?" James asked. "When you said we could see her-"

"Yes. You can see her, and she's alive. But she never woke up." Benny ran his left hand through his already-disheveled hair. "We've had every doc in from Tanner's Hill to the Mojave Outpost. None of them think she's gonna wake up. Ever." He turned away from them and rubbed his eyes; he looked exhausted.

Sarah snuck a glance at Charon; his expression was usually unreadable, and so it was now, but it was different somehow, as if his body was present but his mind miles away. James kept talking. "I'm a doctor, too, and I don't think I flatter myself to say of no small ability. Perhaps I can still help her."

At this, Benny looked much like Sarah had felt in the elevator: hopeful, and afraid.

She spoke up, offering what help she could. "We can take her back to the Citadel. We've got a vertibird; we could be there in a matter of hours. We could be in California even quicker, if my father's policies don't disincline them to help us."

Benny shook his head. "Can't move her. Nothing that might jar her or shake her around."

"Why can't she be moved?" James asked.

Benny shifted from foot to foot. "She has a- the docs call it a 'previous insult' to her brain. They say any substantial movement now might kill her."

"What sort of previous insult?"

Benny turned his eyes to the floor. "She was...shot. In the head."

Charon closed his eyes and bowed his head. "I need to see her." His soft voice, without its usual growl, almost startled Sarah as much as a shout. It sounded nothing like Charon; it sounded...defeated.

Benny shook himself back to the moment. "Right," he said, turning the doorknob behind him without looking. "She's in here."

They approached the room quietly, even James letting Charon take point. Though she was thinner than they'd last seen her and the desert sun had tinted her brown hair with red, it was indeed Honor who lay in the large bed, blankets and pillows carefully tucking her in, a small red teddy bear nestled under one limp arm. She had always been pale- after all, her skin hadn't seen the sun until she was nineteen- but now her skin looked almost translucent. Benny had tactfully remained in the outer room, and the four of them ranged around the bed, Charon dropping to his knee beside it. He picked up one of her fine, enervated hands and engulfed it in his. He nuzzled her hair, placing his lips close to her ear. Sarah realized he was whispering to her, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable; they all cared for Honor in their own ways, but now she felt this moment should have been Charon's alone- none of them was closer to her than he. When she saw a tear trace his cheek, she turned away. She glanced up and met Benny's eyes through the open door. He was leaning against the nearest couch, the pose one of casual familiarity, and it only took another beat for her to realize the situation. This wasn't Honor's, but Benny's suite- Benny's bed. Emotional as he was, he wasn't tearing up over a friend, but a lover.

Except Honor would never, ever betray someone, most especially Charon.

What the hell was going on here? Something the man at the front desk had said came to mind, something Benny had repeated, and Sarah tilted her head as a request to him to step closer. He obliged. "You and the man downstairs both commented about us knowing Honor 'before'- before what?"

Now, finally, Benny looked just a little bit nervous. But he answered, "Before she was shot."

James looked away from the heartbreaking reunion and toward them. "She was different afterward? Her personality changed?"

"No way of knowing. All she could remember was her name. It's like her mind was...wiped clean."

Reilly clenched and unclenched her jaw. "And who's the bastard who shot her? Or have you already taken care of the son of a bitch?"

Benny half smiled. "It was me." He met Reilly's eyes squarely. "I'm the son of a bitch who shot her."

Before Sarah could even wrap her head around that, Charon had launched from the floor and into Benny, propelling him from the doorway into the nearest wall. He had the smaller man off the floor at least a foot, one hand wrapped around his throat just under his jaw, his other forearm braced across Benny's midriff and holding most of his weight. _So he can talk while Charon chokes him_, Sarah realized. _We're going to get to stand here and watch him kill an unarmed man._ She knew better than to think any of them could stop him, and at the moment, probably none of them wanted to.

"What the fuck do you mean, you shot her?" Charon trembled from head to foot and punctuated his words by cracking the back of Benny's head against the wall, and Sarah was again amazed at how much fury and frustration Charon had managed to suppress. Up until now.

Benny seemed unnaturally calm, and offered no argument. "I didn't know her yet," he grated out. "I thought I had to, for what I needed to do. She'd have done the same, she said. I didn't know her then."

Charon tightened his grip, and Benny closed his eyes, still unresisting. Slowly, painfully (for both of them in different ways, Sarah figured), Charon lowered him. "Explain." He didn't remove his hand from Benny's throat, and Benny didn't protest. He just spoke. He told them everything, from the pre-war megalomaniac with his foot on the throat of New Vegas to his acquisition and reprogramming of Yes Man to that night in the graveyard. He went further, telling them how Honor had spared his life, helped him escape the Legion by giving him her only stealth boy so he could sneak out while she covered his retreat with her own blood. He told them how he'd slept better at first knowing she'd survived what he'd done to her, then worse after she willingly sacrificed her well being for his. And he told them how she had found him again, brought him back to the Strip and the only family he'd ever known, and how, in time, they had fallen so hard for each other. Sarah, worldly though she was, believed every word.

Charon seemed less inclined to do so. He stood for an interminable moment, his fingers flexing and unflexing around Benny's neck. "So the two of you are..."

"I didn't know she had anyone else," Benny replied softly. "_She_ didn't know. I didn't think it was possible, that such a solid platinum gal would be alone, but...I thought I'd hit the greatest jackpot of my life. Several times over." He met Charon's eyes, then shrugged an apology. "It really was too good to be true."

Charon was silent long enough that Sarah began itching to reach for the gun she was no longer carrying. Of course, it was the four of them against one man- and one of _them_ was Charon- but this was also a man who'd managed to come closer to killing Honor than the Capital Wasteland and the Enclave had, combined. He probably knew a trick or two, but still...

"I understand why you wanna off me." Benny had still made no move to distance himself from Charon, which, in Sarah's opinion, lent weight to his next words. "And it's copacetic if you do. I deserve it for what I did to her. But tell her-" here he broke off again before continuing- "that I love her. She's- everything. The tops." And he stood there, arms at his sides, Charon's hand around his throat, and waited.

Charon flexed his fingers again, then growled out, "That's acceptable." And in the next instant he had pinned Benny again to the wall, choking him to death with one hand.

Benny still didn't resist, even as the others begged Charon to stop, that he might still have information they needed. He didn't even reflexively raise his hands to Charon's. The awareness in his eyes began to fade.

Sarah heard the click of the main door behind them, and now Benny raised his arms, motioning- to move away? She didn't know why he had the change of heart; she was more concerned about the unknown at her back. She and Reilly spun to face the intruders, a redheaded woman in a cowboy hat and armed with a shotgun, and, of all things, an Enclave eyebot. The woman brought her shotgun to bear on them and the eyebot blasted a short burst of music before swiveling its weapon toward them.

"Why the hell _not_?" the woman shouted, and Sarah realized she was addressing Benny. He wasn't waving them away; he was warding off the woman and the robot from killing them.

"Charon, wait." Reilly darted to his side. His eyes flickered toward her, but Sarah couldn't tell if he actually heard. Reilly tried again. "If he really wanted Honor dead, she would be. She's helpless. If there's anything more he can tell us..."

"Get the fuck away from him before I blow a hole in your back," the redhead snapped in spite of Benny's protests. "Yeah, he's a fucking prick, but he's Honor's fucking prick." Beside her the eyebot darted side to side, aiming its weapon at each of them in turn, beeping and chittering relentlessly.

"You think he might know something useful?" Charon asked.

Reilly sighed. "I don't know. But I know you won't let yourself take that chance. Not where she's involved."

Charon growled under his breath and let go of Benny, who fell immediately to the floor. The eyebot headed straight toward him and hovered- protectively, Sarah thought- about a foot away, but the redheaded woman made no move except to relax a little. "Who the hell are you, and why are you here?"

Benny tried to answer her, but couldn't yet speak. James stepped forward slowly. "I am James Meservey, and Honor is my daughter. These are friends of hers."

The woman's eyes widened. "That a fact?" She glanced down at Benny, who nodded. "Well, I'm sorry then for the introductions. I'm Cass. This is ED-E." The robot chittered. "We're friends of hers, too." She looked them over, completely ignoring the man suffering on the floor. "So she's Honoria Meservey, huh? I've heard of you people, but what's her story? How's the 'messiah of the Capital Wasteland' end up as a lowly courier in the god-forsaken Mojave?"

Benny answered, though his voice rasped. "Favor to the Brotherhood."

"You're kidding. Those pricks? No wonder they rub her the wrong way." She gave Benny a wry look. "They got her shot in the face." She slung her shotgun back over her shoulder and listened while they told what they knew of Honor's misadventures until they'd lost touch when she'd neared Goodsprings. Here, she interjected, "Oh, yeah, when Benny shot her and left her for dead in a shallow grave."

"Yeah," Benny said, voice still husky, "let's dwell on that as much as possible."

"And then we tracked her here," Reilly said, jumping to the end of the story. The tension in the room was already making it hard to breathe without dragging the rest out.

"Hm." Cass glanced at the bedroom door, then back to Benny and the livid bruises rapidly rising on his throat. "Well, don't that just complicate things."


	3. Chapter 3

"Complicate" wasn't the word Sarah would have used for the situation, but it was far more polite. To the relief of all sides, Charon and Benny maintained a delicate civility. Benny seemed ready to acquiesce to any request they made, save to move Honor, and Sarah had to admit she knew of no better doctor- inside the Brotherhood or out- than this Doc Mitchell he had brought in from Goodsprings. The doctor came in twice a day to administer IV nutrients and check Honor's condition, which remained resolutely unchanging. Benny gave them keys to the Presidential suite and two others, though the bedroom of one would have been enough to accommodate all of them; meanwhile, the front desk was turning people away. Whatever Benny's motivation, it wasn't caps.

But, and Sarah was positive about this, it sure as hell wasn't love. A man didn't fall in love with a woman he shot in the face.

Still, she had to admit he made a damned good show of it. The first couple of nights he let Charon sit in the chair at Honor's bedside while he spent the night in a chair next to the door, tactfully out of Charon's line of sight. After those few days, he carried on a hushed conversation with Charon in the bedroom, and they both began keeping vigil, on opposite sides of the bed. It was the strangest- and in some ways, sweetest- thing she'd ever seen. She wasn't surprised by such behavior from Charon (though she was surprised that he allowed Benny to be near Honor at all); her father had told her how Charon had stayed at Honor's side throughout the two weeks she and Sarah had been unconscious after activating the purifier at the Memorial. Their devotion to each other was legendary at the Citadel partly due to that, and partly due to the fact that Honor, clad only in combat armor, had physically attacked Cross after the latter uttered an anti-ghoul slur in front of her. Amazingly Honor had been winning the fist fight through sheer fury when several other power-armored knights managed to peel them apart. Honor had shouted something at Cross- that the "bitch was lucky" Charon hadn't been there to hear- before they got her dragged outside and cooled down.

There was simply no way Sarah could imagine, lost memory or no, Honor being in love with Benny. Part of her wanted Honor to wake up just to explain what the hell was going on.

As it stood now, though, the chances of that happening had dwindled to zero. James and Mitchell had conferred for hours and tried numerous experimental therapies with no results whatsoever. Charon and Benny continued their bedside vigil, but if possible, Charon was even more taciturn than before, and Benny seemed to age by the hour.

Wherever they were all headed, it was nowhere good.

~#~

Benny had yet to surrender to that fatalistic view, and neither, obviously, had Charon. They'd found odd support in their considered alliance, and comfort, strange as that was. He knew that the truce with Charon surprised both camps, but so far neither he nor Charon had chosen to share the details with them. Just as well. Honor's friends- and especially her father- didn't need the details of her love life.

Those details had sure helped _him_, though. When he'd first seen Charon- huge, hulking wall of predator grace and muscle that he was- he had to admit he'd seen writing on the wall, and it hadn't been his. Honor, pussycat to him, Amazon warrior woman to the rest of the Mojave, belonged with a man like that...what _he_ had once been but turned his back on in exchange for life on the Strip. She belonged with another predator. He'd have figured the two for lovers if Charon _hadn't_ pinned him to the wall.

Besides, James made it clear he outright hated the guy...or at the very least detested his existence. And on the surface, who could blame him? He'd left his nineteen-year-old daughter in a vault, the story went, to protect her; instead she comes to the surface, loses her virginity to a stone cold killer- and a ghoul to boot- and slaughters her way across the Capital Wasteland with said killer at her shoulder. Daddy's little girl...not exactly. Not exactly Daddy's dream for girlie's future, either

Except Daddy, and Brotherhood Sentinel and mercenary, all had it wrong. Charon had spilled out everything (or at least, everything important between them) to Benny that first night they'd stayed by her bed together. Charon did love her, devotedly and passionately. He'd just never gotten around to telling her. She was his employer, he'd said. A sexual relationship would have been..."inappropriate."

Benny studied Charon's frown from across the bed. _Yeah. Fuck "inappropriate" now, huh, pally?_ Because from the look on the other man's face, Benny would have bet his right arm that Charon wished now he'd said something, and to hell with "inappropriate."

Because now, by both their lights, that made Honor Benny's.

Pyrrhic victory, Benny figured.

Truth was, until Charon appeared on the scene, he'd figured- correctly, he knew now- that he was Honor's first-and-only...maybe not her first-and-only love, but certainly her first-and-only lover. Their first time together, she'd been willing- enthusiastic, even- but unsure. A little clumsy, a little timid, nothing like his killer kitten who'd served up New Vegas on a silver platter for him. And physically, she'd been...

He tried to stop that line of thought when his pants started becoming uncomfortable. He wasn't shy about his sexual prowess, and Lady Luck had been very, _very_ good to him. But even with his size, Honor had wrapped around him tighter still. Patience and passion had opened her to him, and god, it had been...more than memorable, and not just because of the sex. He couldn't remember ever looking forward to seeing a woman again after a night's tumble, but with Honor... Maybe it was the damage he had done to her, the erasure of her past, but she dealt plainly with everyone, even him, and he might question why she stayed, but he knew it was because she wanted to. That kind of devotion was both alien to him, and infinitely welcome; it was surprisingly nice to be with a woman without suspecting ulterior motives and to have a partner and confidant he could turn his back on without getting a knife in it. He always knew where he stood with her, as did her friends, and her enemies. She threw herself into every relationship with the same headlong passion (even when she shouldn't, as her friends frequently reminded him) as if she had no past, no life of her own to protect. It had certainly worked out for him. Until now, of course, that her past sat across their bed from him.

At least Charon, lucky bastard, didn't know what he was missing.

So, yeah. Pyrrhic. But still better than a loss, and he'd take it over that any day.

Voices from the front room shut down his maudlin train of thought altogether. He exchanged furrowed looks with Charon and pushed himself out of his chair with his uninjured arm, silently promising her- so many things, as always. To protect her. To cover Charon's back, should this prove to be another assault on the casino, or anything that might endanger their mutual pussycat. Benny had already acquainted Charon with the back way out of the suite, just as a precaution. Benny had every faith that, like he himself, Charon would stop short of nothing to protect Honor, including ending any life he had to, even his own. He was confident he could leave her in no better hands than Charon's.

He stepped out into the suite's main room to find Swank, James, and a man he didn't know arguing in the entryway. "Boss, I told this guy nobody gets in to see you, but he made a run for the elevator. We didn't shoot him 'cause he says he knows somethin' to help that dame of yours."

"That's right." The stranger turned to Benny, who'd made it to the door by now. "I know someone who can help her."

"Yeah?" Benny kept his expression cool, but his stomach twisted itself into a knot. "Who?"

The man hesitated, fiddling with the cuffs of his coat. Then he put his hands out in front of him and shoved Benny backwards into the doorjamb. He was a couple of inches shorter than Benny, but Benny fell back, fire stabbing through his gut and into his back under the man's right hand.

The man held his face close to Benny's, eyes wild with joy, as Swank pulled his gun. "Ave! True to Cae-"

Swank opened his skull. He dropped, lifeless before he hit the floor.

Benny tried to push himself away from the door frame, but couldn't. James put his hands on Benny's shoulders and held him back. Up. "Don't move, for God's sake..."

"Jesus, Boss!" Swank looked back and forth between them.

Benny stared down for a few seconds at the knife hilt sticking out of his abdomen. He tried again to pull himself away from the wall and realized that he was pinned there, like a cazador under glass. The knife had gone through him and embedded in the door frame, and he didn't have the leverage to free it. Blood pooled through his shirt and ran down his hip and thigh, the feeling of it far too familiar. He began to shiver.

"Cut him loose from the door." Charon had entered the room at the gunshot, and his tone was commanding enough that neither of the other men questioned him; James kept supporting Benny, now with Charon's help, while Swank ran to find someone in maintenance to cut through the knife blade.

"Stabbed me..." Benny said.

"We'd noticed. Be still."

"Take care of her." Benny turned his face up to Charon's.

Charon returned his worried look calmly. "You aren't dead yet. Now be still."

"Keep...rolling the dice..." Benny sagged and the men redoubled their efforts to hold his weight off the blade.

James opened the tear in Benny's shirt around the blade. The entry wound was uglier than he'd expected from a knife slender enough to smuggle into the casino. And to complicate things, Benny was heavy, far heavier than he looked. Small wonder; his body under James's hands was solid muscle. _Eight years civilized,_ he reminded himself; _and before that, a tribal nomad._ The other Strip families, they'd been told, had gone soft, preferred hiring others to do their dirty work; but not this one. Not this one man, anyway. He preferred to handle things himself..._including,_ James thought bitterly, _shooting my daughter._ He gave to a moment's temptation and slacked his grip, but Charon took up his part of the burden and kept the rapidly-fading Benny from sliding further down on the knife. James suppressed a snarl. For supposedly loving his daughter, the ghoul was getting on surprisingly well with her attempted murderer.

And rapist, in James's opinion Without her memory, Honor's judgment was clearly impaired, rendering her incapable of granting consent. Obviously, that didn't bother Benny. He suddenly wondered if her being unconscious stopped this- this slimy radroach from doing whatever he wanted to her- what might he even have done to her before tossing her in that grave?- and nearly vomited at the imagined scene of Benny raping his daughter's helpless body at her own graveside. He managed to keep some composure, but derived far too much satisfaction from Benny's soft suppressed groans as he probed again at the wound.

Swank returned with bolt cutters, and with Cass, Sarah and Reilly, and the robot at his heels. Somebody swept the bar clear as Swank cut Benny free, and they lifted him to the bar smoothly. Benny's breathing, ragged and strained, was the only sound he made.

"What do we do?" Swank asked, cutters dangling from one hand as he stared at the trail of blood from Benny's side down the front of the bar.

"Go downstairs," James replied. "Get Dr. Mitchell from wherever Benny's been keeping him."

Swank vanished. James nodded at the door, and Sarah kicked the corpse into the hall and closed it behind Swank. James's hand hesitated over the hilt of the knife, and Reilly spoke. "I've seen that type of blade before. It's serrated to make up for it being so narrow. If you pull it out, you'll rip him up inside. You'll kill him."

James breathed carefully, in, out, trying to find someplace in his mind he could stand in this madness and pretend that this was a normal procedure. A normal patient. _His daughter's helpless body... His daughter's would-be killer. His daughter's rapist._ "Are you certain?"

"Even if it isn't, won't he bleed worse if you pull it out?" Cass asked.

Charon looked positively murderous. He answered her indirectly, growling at James, "You don't want to save him. You want to kill him."

James mustered all the authority he could in the face of Charon's indignation. "That's outrageous! I'm a physician, for God's sake-"

"Having him out of the way would help, though, wouldn't it?" Charon asked, his hand edging toward the stock of his shotgun. "If Benny is gone, who is to stop you from taking Honor out of here?"

James gritted his teeth, another image of Benny humping and grunting over his naked, unconscious little girl forming unbidden over the sight of the helpless man bleeding out on the counter before him. "I swear, I am doing my best to help him." He gripped the hilt and pulled firmly, keeping the blade aligned with the angle of entry as if, indeed, he was trying to do as little further harm as possible. The blade caught with a sucking, tearing sound that was nearly drowned out by Benny's strangled cry. Charon slung his shotgun off his shoulder and James yanked harder, dislodging the blade by a good two inches and bringing Benny nearly upright with a shout. James released the blade immediately and Benny fell back, his head cracking against the bar top.

"Get away from him!" Charon snarled, warning James back with the muzzle of the shotgun. Reilly stepped past them to hold Benny's shoulders, steadying him as his body contorted around the blade.

Benny gasped, and Reilly petted his forehead. She tried to still him with a hand on his sternum, but even that gentle pressure arched his back and dragged another choked cry from his bruised throat. "Don't..." He tried to edge away from her touch, but dislodging the blade even that much brought him up short. He paled and pressed the side of his face into the cool countertop.

"Reilly! For fuck's sake, stop touching him!" Cass shouted.

"I'm just trying to help-"

"That's not helping! Christ!"

A new voice cut through the room, bringing them all up short. "Next one of you touches him, I turn your head into a canoe." As one, they turned toward the bedroom door to find ED-E, the eyebot, hovering under the arm of- supporting- a very weak, but very conscious, Honor. ED-E chittered at them, his weapon swiveling, but Honor's pistol didn't waver from its aim at Reilly's forehead. Her eyes swept the room, settling on Cass. "I heard Benny scream," she said, her words a bit slurred now but her gun still steady.

"You did," Cass replied, her eyes huge. "Sweetie...are you sure you should be upright? How do you feel?"

Honor swayed a little and blinked heavily. "I heard Benny scream."

Charon reholstered his gun and took half a slow step toward her, opening the distance between himself and the bar counter so Honor could see Benny. "He's been stabbed," he said, his voice as gentle as when he'd told Benny he needed to see her, so many nights ago.

With ED-E's help, she wavered toward them. "How-?"

"Legion," Cass said.

Honor stumbled the rest of the way to Benny's side. She fell against Charon, then leaned on him for support, apparently unaware she was even doing it. She placed a pale hand on Benny's forehead and he quieted beneath her touch. She dropped her sagging pistol and lifted her other hand to Benny's throat, trembling fingers tracing the ring of bruises there, then brushing lightly across the sling on his right arm. "What...what happened?" She swayed again. "He's gonna be all right, though...right?" She turned to gaze up at Charon but had a hard time focusing on him. "You were protecting him."

Charon straightened "I was."

"Who- why?"

He closed his eyes briefly before answering. "Because you love him."

"Oh. Do you know me?"

Charon's voice wavered slightly, but it was mostly lost in his ghoul's growl. "Yes, I do. I did- very well."

She slipped her arms around his waist, laid her head into his chest, and hugged him tight. "Thank you."

It was their first embrace.

She pulled away and leaned over Benny, who still seemed to be resting a bit easier for her having touched him. She stroked his face tenderly, and he opened his eyes and turned to her.

"Honor- Pussycat-"

She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. "Oh, baby, don't move, don't worry. You'll be all right." She glanced back at Charon, then Cass, for support.

"Doc Mitchell's on his way," Cass said.

Honor turned back to Benny and gazed down at him with open adoration. She smiled at him reassuringly. "Well, we know he does good work."

Benny reached toward her face with a shaking hand, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers before she took his hand and held it between her own to steady it. "Thought you'd...never wake up...never hear your voice, or...see those pretty eyes again."

She turned again to Cass for help to spare Benny's throat the explanation. "What does he mean?"

Cass waved toward the bedroom. "You got clipped on the head pretty good. You've been unconscious for weeks."

"Doc...didn't think you'd..." Benny squeezed his eyes shut, seemingly against the emotional pain as much as the physical.

"Oh, honey baby," Honor murmured, "you should know by now it isn't that easy to get rid of me. You're still stuck with me."

Benny smiled weakly. "Thank god." Then he winced again, suppressing the urge to writhe. Honor took the opportunity to round on James and Reilly.

"Who the fuck are you?" She cut her eyes toward Cass and back again. "And why are you still alive?"

"They were trying to help," Sarah answered.

Cass scowled. "Sort of."

Honor swayed again and braced herself over Benny, palms flat on the counter on either side of his body. "Sort of?"

Cass shifted her weight, her hand on her hip and her shotgun propped against her shoulder, ready for quick use as she eyed James. "There's been some debate on that point."

"Honor." James took a step toward her. "Don't you remember me- any of us- at all?"

"No." She turned to Cass again. "'S he a threat?"

"I don't think so," she replied, though her tone strongly suggested that she'd considered a different answer.

"Hmph." Honor steadied herself again but didn't budge from her protective stance over Benny. "'Kay. For now."

Before James could argue her slurred pronouncement, the doors to the suite opened and Swank entered, followed by Doc Mitchell. Both men halted abruptly upon seeing Honor upright and guarding Benny, but Mitchell composed himself quickly and hurried to Benny's other side. "I suppose we'll discuss your second miraculous recovery later," he said to her. "But for right now...you two just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" He had Benny's shirt open and was examining the damage; his tone was light, but the furrow of his eyebrows told the true story.

"Never...a dull..." Benny's eyelids fluttered as he fought to stay conscious.

"It's all right, son. Just relax. Asleep is better than awake right now, anyway."

After Benny's eyes drifted closed and stayed, Honor asked, "'S bad, isn't it?"

"'Fraid so, my dear. But I'll do my best to fix him up right as rain, you can count on that."

"I know," Honor replied, pushing herself off of Benny so Mitchell could tend to him and tipping backward into the solid wall that was Charon, "otherwise you wouldn't be here."


	4. Chapter 4

Several hours of deft doctoring (and more stimpaks and med-x injections than Honor cared to count) later, Benny was as healed as Mitchell could make him without an autodoc. Honor, as soon as they'd settled Benny into the bed she had so recently occupied, sent a runner to the Followers to see what it would take to get an autodoc for the Tops: this would never happen again if she had any say, but if it did, Benny would not have to wait for treatment a second time.

And so the tableau of the bedside vigil changed appearance, if not players, with Honor planted steadfastly at Benny's side while he finished recovering, and Charon keeping watch at the door. For not remembering the hulking ghoul, Cass thought, Honor seemed awfully ready to trust him; but she figured some part of Honor must recognize him as a "safe place" from her past.

Whatever the case, those latent feelings or memories or whatever they were most assuredly did not extend to Honor's father or the other two women, particularly the one who'd been trying to soothe Benny and failing so miserably. Honor simply had no patience for anyone who brought Benny pain or unhappiness. Cass figured that Honor's reasoning was, if ishe/i could overlook the fact that he'd shot her in the head, no one else had any cause or excuse to do him harm.

At any rate, she knew Honor well enough not to argue. Honor was crazy about Benny even if he was a slimeball- well, had been a slimeball, anyway. Cass had to admit that his behavior since falling in with Honor had changed. A lot. But she tended to have that effect on people; she'd picked up a lot of friends in her trek through the Mojave- Cass had met about half a dozen of them, herself- and all of them had some tale to tell of how crossing Honor's path had changed them. Probably even the robot could have told her some stories, if she could understand him. Sometimes, she thought Honor could; and sometimes, she thought the damn hunk of metal loved her for it.

Right now, ED-E hovered near the bedroom door, just in case his mistress- or possibly master, as he seemed almost as willing to serve Benny now as Honor- needed anything. Charon hovered, too, though less literally, and was even more motionless than the robot. The only sounds in the suite were gentle whispers from James and the two Capital Wasteland women, discussing what might happen now that Honor was conscious. She caught only a few words here and there, her mouth quirking at one exchange regarding Benny's shooting of Honor- "I feel bad now for being attracted to him" from the strawberry-haired woman, followed by "You and me both" from the blonde- innocuous enough talk, she figured, that it was a perfect time to grab a nap while she could. She leaned back in the couch cushions and tilted her hat down over her eyes.

A shout ripped through the suite, followed by frantic voices and Honor calling Benny's name over and over.

Cass rushed to the bedroom, followed by the others. Benny sat doubled over in a tangle of sheets, but from the look on his face Cass knew he had no idea where he actually was. His shoulders lay across Honor's lap, the muscles across his back spasming visibly beneath scarred skin, sweat streaming from his face onto her knees. She curled around him, cradling him, bracing his forehead in one hand and stroking his hair with the other. "Benny, baby, easy, it's all right, you're home now, you're with me, I won't let anybody hurt you ever again, I swear, I promise, baby, please, it's all right, you're home, you're with me now..."

Cass stepped back; this was old hat for her. The others gaped and she wondered if she should shoo them away; then again, maybe they should know this about Benny...know more about exactly whom they were fucking with if they thought they could waltz onto the Strip and just walk out again with Honor.

James edged forward as Benny nearly convulsed in Honor's lap. "What- is he-"

Honor barely spared him a glance. "Cass, would you, please?"

Cass nodded, even though she knew Honor was paying her no attention whatsoever, and gestured the interlopers back out into the sitting area with a tilt of her head. She closed the bedroom door behind them, leaving Charon and ED-E to help Honor with Benny.

She sat, not really caring if they others followed suit, but they did. To her surprise, they were also politely quiet, awaiting her explanation "Okay. You've heard of the Legion."

Three nods. "Some tribal group bent on taking over this region," James said.

"More like an army, I thought," Sarah added.

"Worse than both. Look, I'll spare you the gory details, but you could kill every one of the bastards, dump 'em in a mass grave, and still not have anybody show up for the funeral.

"So, back when the Mojave was still up for grabs, they captured Benny. He had something Caesar wanted, something that would let Benny- well, Honor, as it turned out- take over the Strip...and the whole goddamned Mojave. A pretty important little trinket.

"Well, they took it; one man against a hundred, he couldn't stop them. But they didn't know what it was, what it did or how it worked. So they tortured him."

She waited for that to sink in a bit- for their varying degrees of discomfort to fade- before continuing. "I still don't know what they did to him. He downplays it, even jokes about it- well, when he's awake, anyway- and Honor just turns green when anybody mentions it. Or comes close to mentioning it. Or vaguely reminds her of it."

Just as the silence became unbearable, James asked, "If I may...how long ago was this?"

Cass thought. "Months. Eight, nine, maybe."

"Quite recent, then." Another long pause followed, broken only by a strangled cry from the other side of the bedroom door. Cass couldn't tell if it had been from Benny or Honor. It was a primal cry, deeper than gender, deeper than the pain of simple nightmares. Even Benny didn't deserve it. Honor sure as hell didn't.

"Do you think you can do something to help him?"

James shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I've no training in psychiatry or psychology..."

Cass shook her head. "That's not the problem. He's still in pain from it. He doesn't let on, and neither does Honor, but they didn't heal him right when they got done with him. The Followers don't know what's still wrong, and he won't stay in an autodoc long enough for them to find out. Says he's got too much to do, running the city and all." She sounded doubtful. "Maybe he figures it's permanent and just doesn't want to hear it. All I know is, every once in awhile something sets him off and all of a sudden he looks like a nightstalker's eating its way through him. On top of that, Julie- she's one of the Follower docs- says she thinks even if they could pin him down long enough to get a diagnosis, that their autodocs are too out of date to fix it, not after it's gone this long." She glanced toward the door.

Sarah said, "The Commonwealth...I bet they've got autodocs that have up-to-date software."

Charon's voice cut across the room, though he spoke softly enough Cass was sure neither Honor nor Benny, still in the bedroom behind him, could hear. "Then I suppose you have your way to get Honor back to DC."

James stiffened. "That wasn't my intention. This is not what I would have chosen."

Charon closed the door behind him. "It's why you came out here."

"As did you," James snapped, his hands clenching into fists on his thighs. "Frankly I'm surprised you weren't ready to drag her back home as soon as you found her in another man's bed."

Charon snarled, standing straighter when Cass was sure what he really wanted to do was curl up and cry. "She's happy here. And if there's still any danger in the journey-"

"Then she'll refuse, won't she?"

Charon shook his head. "No. Not where he's concerned. If helping him kills her, she'll do it."

"As she once would have done for you," James said, and for the first time, Cass felt sorry for him. She supposed, from his point of view, his daughter had made some...disappointing choices in potential sons-in-law.

And obviously, Honor's days of listening to Daddy were over long before she came to the Mojave.

"There's no one out here who can help?" Reilly asked, trying to derail the pissing contest going on around her.

"Believe me, if there was someone good enough out here, Honor would have dragged him to 'em by now." Cass felt chilled as she reflected on Honor's desperate search for someone to help Benny. "Look, the things she's seen- that she's had to do to people, or had done to herself- she doesn't flinch to talk about it. Laughs about stuff she's gone through. Something makes _her_ throw up just to think about it- that's not something a guy's going to get over just because someone jabs him with a couple of stimpaks, no matter how strong he is.

"But that's what you're getting with Benny. If you hadn't had front row seats today, you'd never have known he'd gone through something like that, would you? He didn't get where he is by being anybody's bitch, by getting fucked by just anybody who thinks they have what it takes to stand against him. So you keep that in mind-" She half-turned toward Charon, but addressed James alone- "you take her back to DC for whatever reason, Benny is never gonna leave her there."

Charon relaxed somewhat at Cass's assessment. James just shook his head and excused himself from the suite to get some air in the courtyard. Reilly asked Sarah to join her downstairs for a drink, obviously anxious to escape the tension. And Charon surprised Cass by taking up the now-empty couch opposite her. For a moment, he was as stiffly upright as he had been guarding the door; then all at once he deflated, head dropping into his hands, shoulders slumping with a sigh. "You must be exhausted," Cass blurted before she thought. The word "taciturn" must have been coined to describe Charon, at least when he wasn't enraged over Honor, and she didn't expect him to respond well to small talk about himself.

He surprised her again. "Yes. We- ghouls- don't require much sleep, but..." He shook his head. "I've been worried about her. And she has needed me."

Cass decided it was safe to push a little further. "You're more than her employee, aren't you? I mean, you obviously love her, and you haven't really confirmed or denied what the others think."

"What they think," Charon repeated carefully.

She shrugged. "That you're lovers. Have been for some time. Maybe since you met."

He almost smiled- almost. "They are incorrect."

"Oh." Cass blinked at that as she readjusted how she thought of the sad, strange situation.

"But you are not. I do love her."

"Oh..."

"But she does-" He halted, realizing he had to correct himself- "did not know."

Cass glanced back at the bedroom door. "You sure about that?"

"I never told her."

"You don't have to say it for someone to know it. You think she loves Benny?"

His features hardened, but his voice remained soft. "Of course. Ardently."

"Have you heard her say it? She doesn't very damn often, at least not in front of anybody. I think we broke her of that, honestly." Cass propped her feet on the coffee table. "Just how do things get so fucked up?"

Charon was quiet a long while, staring at the floor between his feet. "If she knew..."

Seeing immediately where he was going with this, Cass said, "Now hold on, before you decide you know what she thought about it. You ever make any moves on her?"

This brought back the ramrod-straight bearing that made the man so frightening- well, one of the things, Cass reflected "Of course not."

"Because of her being your boss and all."

"Yes."

"Well, you know Honor. She can't have changed that much. Think: how would she feel about herself if she thought that _maybe_ you wanted her, and she _did_ want you, and she took you to bed...?"

Slowly he smiled, but there was far more pain than pleasure in it. "She would worry...that no matter my feelings for her, that I was only obeying the terms of my contract."

"Yeah. That's what I figured. She's real big on knowing people's real motives- lord knows how she ever started trusting Benny- and if she thought there was any chance she was forcing you, she'd cut off her own fingers sooner than touch you." He nodded. "And I'll tell you something else. The way she lets you near her, I mean physically close, how she touches you without really thinking about it, just casual, like it's the most normal thing in the world- she's only that affectionate with her closest friends. The kind of trust she put in you, from the moment she saw you- she remembers you. Somewhere, deep down, some part of her still knows exactly who you are. Not her comrades in arms. Not her friends. Not her _father. You."_ She gave him a decisive nod. "Think about what _that_ means."

He watched her for a moment, appraising. "You sound as though you want me to...press the issue."

"Oh, how so?"

"You sound as if you want me to take her back home with me...away from her life here. Away from Benny."

Cass tilted her head and considered "Is that what I sound like?"

"It is. To me."

She thought long and hard before answering. "Maybe I do. Or maybe it's just holdover from when she and Benny got together. I mean, I couldn't believe it- none of us could- that she was fucking a guy who'd shot her in the skull and left her for dead in a shallow grave." Cass shuddered. "But- she sees stuff in people. Stuff others don't see. She...changes people. Seems to have a good effect on 'em." She smiled at Charon. "She always been like that?"

He gave her a genuine smile in return. "She has always found it difficult to turn her back on someone when she knows she can help. She says doing all she can for the wasteland is 'good for her karma.'"

Cass nodded. "There was a time I'd have loved to see her walk out on Benny. Hell, there was a time I'd have loved to see her, me, or anybody else put a bullet through his pea brain. But...not now. Not as much. She seems so much more settled and happy here with him than she did when I met her. Did she ever seem that way- back home?"

The pause, though brief, was painful in the depth of the emotions that played across his face. "For a time. A very short time."

"Oh. And then she came out here."

Another pause. "Yes."

"God, that sucks."

He smiled again. "Sometimes you sound very much like her."

Cass grinned. "Yeah, well, we're both just practical, straightforward gals." She let the moment linger before asking, "So...what do you do now?"

He shrugged. "What I have always done. I will serve her according to the terms of my contract until I am killed or she sells it to someone else."

"Now that really sucks. That's all you've got? That's the best you can hope for?"

"It is all I need."

"It's not much."

"It is enough to-" His voice hitched, and when he continued, Cass could hear the pain belying his words. "To be near her. To protect and care for her as she needs."

"It's still not much."

"It is all I have. It is all I have a right to." He narrowed his eyes, almost with amusement. "What would _you_ have me do?"

"I don't know...rebel or something, I guess."

"Against whom? Honor has treated me with more respect and dignity than any of my previous employers...or perhaps, anyone at all. It would be unfair to punish her for my frustration." He paused. "And Benny does love her. I would have killed him by now, otherwise."

Cass grinned. "I thought you might. Hell, when I first saw you, I thought you _were_."

"I intended to."

She shook her head. "He's the luckiest son of a bitch who ever walked the earth."

Again, a terrible pause, then Charon murmured, "Yes. He is."

~#~

Honor stretched, her back popping. ED-E gave the softest of chirps and she patted him reassuringly, then leaned her head against his cold frame. Benny had finally given in to sleep, and she was sure the blood loss had "helped." And silently, for the millionth time, she wished she hadn't killed Caesar and Lucius so she could kill them all over again. Only more slowly this time.

If she had known then what those psychopaths had already done to Benny- bad enough to know what Casesar had yet planned to do- she would have taken the bastards alive, and killed them for days. Weeks, maybe.

Months, if she'd had an autodoc like they had.

That's how they'd done it, how they'd finally prised the information out of Benny about the Platinum Chip. The usual threats, the "usual" torture hadn't worked on a tribal...certainly not on one as stubborn as Benny. So Caesar had resorted to more brutal methods. And each time those methods left Benny lying close to death, an hour in the autodoc ensured he could withstand the next go around.

Persuasive, Benny had called it.

Honor had a different word for it.

She tilted her head against ED-E again, comforted by his soft chirps, and watched Benny sleep. Caesar had done a butcher's job on him with his bubblegum-and-baling twine autodoc (though she suspected the poor condition of the machine had nothing to do with the incompetence of treatment), the scars raised, red, angry, mapping out every cut, every abrasion, every degloving they had inflicted on him. Testifying to the abilities of the machine in caring hands, the few sessions Benny acquiesced to in the Followers' autodoc had left his body only lightly scarred. Now someone would have to know what they were looking at to recognize the pale, striped lacework across his body for what it was.

She knew what she was looking at, and would happily have endured it herself to have spared him, even then, before he was her lover.

He'd asked her once how she could ever trust him, how she could close her eyes at night lying next to him after what he had done to her. "You were honest with me," she'd told him. "You waited for me to wake up, and you looked me in the eye. And when I found you on your knees in Caesar's tent, you didn't beg, or bargain, or make excuses. You faced what you'd done and who you were, just like you faced me in that graveyard. You respected me," she'd said. "And I respected you for it." She smiled now at the memory. She'd been telling the truth, and she reeled a little at the number of people- smoothskin, mutant, nightkin, ghoul- she had killed without looking in the face. From a distance, from behind, unarmed. She'd thrown a grenade into a Legion campsite while they slept (though she honestly couldn't say she felt guilty about that, especially now). And Benny, who'd tried to kill her, was more noble than she.

She'd also been truthful when she told him she'd have done the same thing, given the same knowledge he'd had. After all, she'd killed House, hadn't she? And he had been nothing more than a helpless old man.

She brushed a tendril of hair back from Benny's forehead, and he hummed contentedly in his sleep. He hadn't deserved to suffer at her hands for what he'd done.

And no one deserved to suffer what Caesar had done to him...except maybe Caesar and his right hand torturer, and it was too late for that, unfortunately, or she would have happily tracked the sadistic fucks down and delighted in making them pay.

Benny shifted, turning slightly and tossing one arm above his head. Just below the point where his tricep met his torso, a thin white line curled; it trailed beneath him and onto his back, marking where Lucius had partially skinned him alive. They'd flayed him across the back from neck to hips before the shock had stopped his heart.

And that was not the worst they'd done. Just the fact that when they were done torturing him they'd "healed" Benny one final time, so that if he were ultimately crucified he'd linger on the cross as long as possible, fully justified her fury as far as she was concerned.

Raul had told her, shortly after they'd met, that the Legion had its good points, that it had civilized Arizona. He'd come to visit them at the Tops once, by chance on a day when they'd slept in, and Benny had greeted him at the door to their suite while still putting on his shirt.

Raul had known what he was looking at, too. Honor hadn't heard him say a decent thing about the Legion since.

And some of them were still around. She wondered what Boone would think if she offered him a job tracking down and slaughtering any of the bastards he could find.

She'd bet he'd be damned good at finding them. She might gain some satisfaction from that; it wasn't like Caesar had acted alone...okay, sure, she'd probably taken care of the major players in Benny's suffering when she wiped out Fortification Hill. But it also wasn't like killing off the rest of the Legion wouldn't be doing the world a big, fat favor.

Benny rolled over again and slowly blinked awake. "Pussycat," he slurred.

"Tiger," she replied, pulling herself back from her thoughts of vengeance. A brief moment of memory nagged at her, a book she'd read, somewhere, somewhen. "'Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night..."

"What?"

"It's- a poem, I think. 'Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry.'"

"It doesn't rhyme," Benny pointed out, smiling.

"It used to- I think. It was pronounced differently...when it was written..." She puzzled a little over the fragment of returned memory; she had no context in which to place it.

Benny tilted his head on the pillow, stretched and yawned. "Did you learn that in the Vault?"

"The wh- huh?"

"Oh. Oh, you don't know yet." He sat up and propped himself against the headboard. "Baby, those people who've come to see you- they came to take you home."

She gave him a half-smile. "I am home."

"And I appreciate that, baby, but seriously- you _did_ have a whole life before I met you."

She was very still for a moment, then shrugged. "I can't imagine it was better than this one." She took his hand and squeezed it gently.

He returned the gesture, but said, "I can imagine it. Besides-" Here he paused, and she frowned; if Benny, with his silver tongue, was having trouble finding the right way to tell her something...well, that was troubling. "The older, stuffy guy...he's your father, Pussycat."

She stared at him a long moment. "He hurt you."

Benny shifted a little. "I don't recall."

"I do," she snapped. "Cass and...Charon, right?...seemed to think he was trying to kill you."

"I don't know, baby. I'm sure if he was he figured he had reason. And he'd be right." She looked poised to argue. "Honey baby, be real. These people are your family, and friends. What are they supposed to make of me?"

She held out stubbornly. "Charon seems all right with us."

Benny sighed. "He's just glad you're happy."

She sat quietly, chewing her lip. "And what is Charon to me?"

He held her gaze, but his expression faltered. "That's...complicated. You should talk to him."

"Why, what did he tell you?"

"Talk to him."

She crossed her arms, mouth set in a firm line.

"Ugh." He leaned forward and ran his hand into his hair, propping his elbow on his knee. "Technically, he's your employee, I guess."

"Employee? Why would I need an employee?"

"Well, you didn't, not like you think. See, you were just a wee kitten when you came outta that vault, just a few years ago. And you know what traveling the wasteland is like; all kinds of us bastards out there." He pressed on before she could argue with his self-assessment. "He's a hired gun, dig? But really, he says, you just bought out his contract to get him away from his previous employer. That cat was bad news, but as long as he held that magic piece of paper, there was nothing Charon could do about it."

They were both silent as she thought about that. "I trust him," she said at last.

Benny smiled a little. "I know. And I think you should. I think...he'll always have your back, no matter what."

"Was he more than my employee?"

"Pussycat. I told you, you should talk to him."

"Was he?"

"Baby-"

"Was he, Benny?" The expression in her eyes was heartbreaking. Benny folded.

"No. But I think you both wanted him to be."

She frowned. "They why weren't we?"

"He can tell you why he didn't put any moves on you. I can only guess why you didn't."

"So guess."

He looked as if he might not answer, but at last he said, "His contract. It's supposed to entitle the bearer to his services in combat, but the terms are, ah, deliberately vague. I think you wouldn't have made moves on him for fear that he was only rolling with you out of obligation."

She recoiled.

"Baby." He took her hands. _"Talk to him."_

She nodded, but distractedly; most of her mind was concentrated on trying again to remember her lost life. Whatever the facts turned out to be, she had already been certain Charon occupied a prominent spot in it, and it frustrated her to no end that she couldn't remember him. Now, worse, she could only hope she'd never hurt him.

Benny watched her for a moment, then patted the bed next to him. She left her chair and joined him under the covers, snuggling under his good arm and encircling him with her own. He eased down against her, his head cupped by her shoulder, his hair ruffling against her chin. She touched the faded bruises around his throat and kissed him tenderly. "So what do we do?"

"That's strictly your call, baby."

"Hmph. Right now all I want is for you to be all right."

"Well. What kind of a world would it be if we could have everything we wanted? That's turn Vegas into a real dullsville in a hurry, if people didn't need to come here to have their fantasies fulfilled." He grinned up at her.

"Yeah, well, I'm not dreaming about becoming a millionaire." She touched her forehead to his. "I want you to be happy."

"Baby, I'm in bed with you. I'm ecstatic."

"And safe."

"Safe as I can be."

"Not good enough."

He straightened up and faced her head on. "It's the Mojave, baby. Nobody's safe, and nobody can be completely happy- not if it takes 'safe' to make you happy. We live in a crazy slice of a crazy world. We just have to take the crazy we like, and ignore the rest."

She frowned. "I need a drink." She climbed out of the blankets and headed for the door.

"Good idea. Make mine a double."

"While you're on med-x. Right." She headed out of the room as ED-E scolded him- most likely for teasing about his injuries when they clearly bothered her so badly.

She found Charon and Cass in the sitting area amid a companionable silence. "What's the word?" she asked Cass, popping open the small fridge behind the counter and gesturing an offer to the two of them as she pulled out bottles.

Cass glanced at Charon, then back to her. "Your...father...thinks he might know someone who can help Benny with...what they did to him."

Honor's hands tightened around the cold bottles. "Who?"

Again, a glance at Charon before Cass answered, "Some docs back east."

"DC?" After a pause, she asked, "That's where I'm from?"

Cass nodded.

Honor turned to Charon. "And what do you think?"

Charon flexed his fingers where they rested on his knees. "He is a well-respected physician and scientist with impressive achievements to his name. Everyone in the region owes him- and you- a great debt. I believe he is telling the truth, and that he could persuade doctors of high caliber to treat Benny, in their own practices or at the Citadel. He would be well cared for, either way."

"So." Honor watched a drop of condensation trail down one of the bottles and across her hand. "I guess we need to pack."

As the bedroom door closed behind Honor, Cass met Charon's eyes. "You didn't seem over eager to tell her," she said gently.

"I knew if there was any chance, she would risk everything for it- she is too careless with her own well being when it comes to protecting someone she..."

When he trailed off, Cass finished, "Loves?"

He didn't meet her eyes. "I'm told she once held a gun to a doctor's head to force him to treat me. She's- zealous."

"But she's tough, right?"

"Yes."

"And Doc Mitchell wouldn't have headed back to Goodsprings if he thought she was still in danger."

"If you say."

"Well, then, what? Are you afraid she'll stay to make Daddy happy? She'll do what she wants in the end. She'll come back home- I mean, here."

He nodded reluctantly. "She has a great many ties to the Capital Wasteland, and so does her father. I know he disapproves of Benny-" his shoulders tensed at the irony- "and will use all the persuasion he can muster to keep her there. He can be...driven."

"So that's where she gets it," Cass drawled. He scowled at her and she suppressed her smile. "So we've got two hard-headed zealots, each wanting something different...who do you think's more likely to win?"

He shook his head. "I don't know him as well, but her well being has led him to drastic measures before. And Honor- I suppose I hardly know her at all, now."

"She still loves you. And she loves Benny. If you both encourage her to come back here, where she's happiest-"

He stiffened again. "It isn't my place to advise her on such things."

"Hmph- your place. You love her. You want her to be happy."

His silence and downcast eyes answered her.

"I said she's happier here than I'd ever seen her. You didn't argue."

He raised his chin in half a nod. "How often do these- Legionaries get access to this 'strip'?"

Cass's mouth tightened. "Not often. The guy who nailed Benny is the second I've known about."

"Then she is safer here." She watched him turn this information over in his mind.

"Look, why the second thoughts? I thought you were pretty dead set on her staying here. Tell me what's worrying you. I might be able to help."

Charon turned away. "I'm being selfish. If we return to the Capital Wasteland and she sees the place we've earned in the community there, I think it is entirely possible she will order me to stay."

"You mean, come back to the Mojave without you?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I don't think she'd do that-"

The bedroom door interrupted her again; Honor leaned around it to address her. "So are you ready to go, or what?"

Several hours of deft doctoring (and more stimpaks and med-x injections than Honor cared to count) later, Benny was as healed as Mitchell could make him without an autodoc. Honor, as soon as they'd settled Benny into the bed she had so recently occupied, sent a runner to the Followers to see what it would take to get an autodoc for the Tops: this would never happen again if she had any say, but if it did, Benny would not have to wait for treatment a second time.

And so the tableau of the bedside vigil changed appearance, if not players, with Honor planted steadfastly at Benny's side while he finished recovering, and Charon keeping watch at the door. For not remembering the hulking ghoul, Cass thought, Honor seemed awfully ready to trust him; but she figured some part of Honor must recognize him as a "safe place" from her past.

Whatever the case, those latent feelings or memories or whatever they were most assuredly did not extend to Honor's father or the other two women, particularly the one who'd been trying to soothe Benny and failing so miserably. Honor simply had no patience for anyone who brought Benny pain or unhappiness. Cass figured that Honor's reasoning was, if ishe/i could overlook the fact that he'd shot her in the head, no one else had any cause or excuse to do him harm.

At any rate, she knew Honor well enough not to argue. Honor was crazy about Benny even if he was a slimeball- well, had been a slimeball, anyway. Cass had to admit that his behavior since falling in with Honor had changed. A lot. But she tended to have that effect on people; she'd picked up a lot of friends in her trek through the Mojave- Cass had met about half a dozen of them, herself- and all of them had some tale to tell of how crossing Honor's path had changed them. Probably even the robot could have told her some stories, if she could understand him. Sometimes, she thought Honor could; and sometimes, she thought the damn hunk of metal loved her for it.

Right now, ED-E hovered near the bedroom door, just in case his mistress- or possibly master, as he seemed almost as willing to serve Benny now as Honor- needed anything. Charon hovered, too, though less literally, and was even more motionless than the robot. The only sounds in the suite were gentle whispers from James and the two Capital Wasteland women, discussing what might happen now that Honor was conscious. She caught only a few words here and there, her mouth quirking at one exchange regarding Benny's shooting of Honor- "I feel bad now for being attracted to him" from the strawberry-haired woman, followed by "You and me both" from the blonde- innocuous enough talk, she figured, that it was a perfect time to grab a nap while she could. She leaned back in the couch cushions and tilted her hat down over her eyes.

A shout ripped through the suite, followed by frantic voices and Honor calling Benny's name over and over.

Cass rushed to the bedroom, followed by the others. Benny sat doubled over in a tangle of sheets, but from the look on his face Cass knew he had no idea where he actually was. His shoulders lay across Honor's lap, the muscles across his back spasming visibly beneath scarred skin, sweat streaming from his face onto her knees. She curled around him, cradling him, bracing his forehead in one hand and stroking his hair with the other. "Benny, baby, easy, it's all right, you're home now, you're with me, I won't let anybody hurt you ever again, I swear, I promise, baby, please, it's all right, you're home, you're with me now..."

Cass stepped back; this was old hat for her. The others gaped and she wondered if she should shoo them away; then again, maybe they should know this about Benny...know more about exactly whom they were fucking with if they thought they could waltz onto the Strip and just walk out again with Honor.

James edged forward as Benny nearly convulsed in Honor's lap. "What- is he-"

Honor barely spared him a glance. "Cass, would you, please?"

Cass nodded, even though she knew Honor was paying her no attention whatsoever, and gestured the interlopers back out into the sitting area with a tilt of her head. She closed the bedroom door behind them, leaving Charon and ED-E to help Honor with Benny.

She sat, not really caring if they others followed suit, but they did. To her surprise, they were also politely quiet, awaiting her explanation "Okay. You've heard of the Legion."

Three nods. "Some tribal group bent on taking over this region," James said.

"More like an army, I thought," Sarah added.

"Worse than both. Look, I'll spare you the gory details, but you could kill every one of the bastards, dump 'em in a mass grave, and still not have anybody show up for the funeral.

"So, back when the Mojave was still up for grabs, they captured Benny. He had something Caesar wanted, something that would let Benny- well, Honor, as it turned out- take over the Strip...and the whole goddamned Mojave. A pretty important little trinket.

"Well, they took it; one man against a hundred, he couldn't stop them. But they didn't know what it was, what it did or how it worked. So they tortured him."

She waited for that to sink in a bit- for their varying degrees of discomfort to fade- before continuing. "I still don't know what they did to him. He downplays it, even jokes about it- well, when he's awake, anyway- and Honor just turns green when anybody mentions it. Or comes close to mentioning it. Or vaguely reminds her of it."

Just as the silence became unbearable, James asked, "If I may...how long ago was this?"

Cass thought. "Months. Eight, nine, maybe."

"Quite recent, then." Another long pause followed, broken only by a strangled cry from the other side of the bedroom door. Cass couldn't tell if it had been from Benny or Honor. It was a primal cry, deeper than gender, deeper than the pain of simple nightmares. Even Benny didn't deserve it. Honor sure as hell didn't.

"Do you think you can do something to help him?"

James shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I've no training in psychiatry or psychology..."

Cass shook her head. "That's not the problem. He's still in pain from it. He doesn't let on, and neither does Honor, but they didn't heal him right when they got done with him. The Followers don't know what's still wrong, and he won't stay in an autodoc long enough for them to find out. Says he's got too much to do, running the city and all." She sounded doubtful. "Maybe he figures it's permanent and just doesn't want to hear it. All I know is, every once in awhile something sets him off and all of a sudden he looks like a nightstalker's eating its way through him. On top of that, Julie- she's one of the Follower docs- says she thinks even if they could pin him down long enough to get a diagnosis, that their autodocs are too out of date to fix it, not after it's gone this long." She glanced toward the door.

Sarah said, "The Commonwealth...I bet they've got autodocs that have up-to-date software."

Charon's voice cut across the room, though he spoke softly enough Cass was sure neither Honor nor Benny, still in the bedroom behind him, could hear. "Then I suppose you have your way to get Honor back to DC."

James stiffened. "That wasn't my intention. This is not what I would have chosen."

Charon closed the door behind him. "It's why you came out here."

"As did you," James snapped, his hands clenching into fists on his thighs. "Frankly I'm surprised you weren't ready to drag her back home as soon as you found her in another man's bed."

Charon snarled, standing straighter when Cass was sure what he really wanted to do was curl up and cry. "She's happy here. And if there's still any danger in the journey-"

"Then she'll refuse, won't she?"

Charon shook his head. "No. Not where he's concerned. If helping him kills her, she'll do it."

"As she once would have done for you," James said, and for the first time, Cass felt sorry for him. She supposed, from his point of view, his daughter had made some...disappointing choices in potential sons-in-law.

And obviously, Honor's days of listening to Daddy were over long before she came to the Mojave.

"There's no one out here who can help?" Reilly asked, trying to derail the pissing contest going on around her.

"Believe me, if there was someone good enough out here, Honor would have dragged him to 'em by now." Cass felt chilled as she reflected on Honor's desperate search for someone to help Benny. "Look, the things she's seen- that she's had to do to people, or had done to herself- she doesn't flinch to talk about it. Laughs about stuff she's gone through. Something makes iher/i throw up just to think about it- that's not something a guy's going to get over just because someone jabs him with a couple of stimpaks, no matter how strong he is.

"But that's what you're getting with Benny. If you hadn't had front row seats today, you'd never have known he'd gone through something like that, would you? He didn't get where he is by being anybody's bitch, by getting fucked by just anybody who thinks they have what it takes to stand against him. So you keep that in mind-" She half-turned toward Charon, but addressed James alone- "you take her back to DC for whatever reason, Benny is never gonna leave her there."

Charon relaxed somewhat at Cass's assessment. James just shook his head and excused himself from the suite to get some air in the courtyard. Reilly asked Sarah to join her downstairs for a drink, obviously anxious to escape the tension. And Charon surprised Cass by taking up the now-empty couch opposite her. For a moment, he was as stiffly upright as he had been guarding the door; then all at once he deflated, head dropping into his hands, shoulders slumping with a sigh. "You must be exhausted," Cass blurted before she thought. The word "taciturn" must have been coined to describe Charon, at least when he wasn't enraged over Honor, and she didn't expect him to respond well to small talk about himself.

He surprised her again. "Yes. We- ghouls- don't require much sleep, but..." He shook his head. "I've been worried about her. And she has needed me."

Cass decided it was safe to push a little further. "You're more than her employee, aren't you? I mean, you obviously love her, and you haven't really confirmed or denied what the others think."

"What they think," Charon repeated carefully.

She shrugged. "That you're lovers. Have been for some time. Maybe since you met."

He almost smiled- almost. "They are incorrect."

"Oh." Cass blinked at that as she readjusted how she thought of the sad, strange situation.

"But you are not. I do love her."

"Oh..."

"But she does-" He halted, realizing he had to correct himself- "did not know."

Cass glanced back at the bedroom door. "You sure about that?"

"I never told her."

"You don't have to say it for someone to know it. You think she loves Benny?"

His features hardened, but his voice remained soft. "Of course. Ardently."

"Have you heard her say it? She doesn't very damn often, at least not in front of anybody. I think we broke her of that, honestly." Cass propped her feet on the coffee table. "Just how do things get so fucked up?"

Charon was quiet a long while, staring at the floor between his feet. "If she knew..."

Seeing immediately where he was going with this, Cass said, "Now hold on, before you decide you know what she thought about it. You ever make any moves on her?"

This brought back the ramrod-straight bearing that made the man so frightening- well, one of the things, Cass reflected "Of course not."

"Because of her being your boss and all."

"Yes."

"Well, you know Honor. She can't have changed that much. Think: how would she feel about herself if she thought that imaybe/i you wanted her, and she idid/i want you, and she took you to bed...?"

Slowly he smiled, but there was far more pain than pleasure in it. "She would worry...that no matter my feelings for her, that I was only obeying the terms of my contract."

"Yeah. That's what I figured. She's real big on knowing people's real motives- lord knows how she ever started trusting Benny- and if she thought there was any chance she was forcing you, she'd cut off her own fingers sooner than touch you." He nodded. "And I'll tell you something else. The way she lets you near her, I mean physically close, how she touches you without really thinking about it, just casual, like it's the most normal thing in the world- she's only that affectionate with her closest friends. The kind of trust she put in you, from the moment she saw you- she remembers you. Somewhere, deep down, some part of her still knows exactly who you are. Not her comrades in arms. Not her friends. Not her ifather. You."/i She gave him a decisive nod. "Think about what ithat/i means."

He watched her for a moment, appraising. "You sound as though you want me to...press the issue."

"Oh, how so?"

"You sound as if you want me to take her back home with me...away from her life here. Away from Benny."

Cass tilted her head and considered "Is that what I sound like?"

"It is. To me."

She thought long and hard before answering. "Maybe I do. Or maybe it's just holdover from when she and Benny got together. I mean, I couldn't believe it- none of us could- that she was fucking a guy who'd shot her in the skull and left her for dead in a shallow grave." Cass shuddered. "But- she sees stuff in people. Stuff others don't see. She...changes people. Seems to have a good effect on 'em." She smiled at Charon. "She always been like that?"

He gave her a genuine smile in return. "She has always found it difficult to turn her back on someone when she knows she can help. She says doing all she can for the wasteland is 'good for her karma.'"

Cass nodded. "There was a time I'd have loved to see her walk out on Benny. Hell, there was a time I'd have loved to see her, me, or anybody else put a bullet through his pea brain. But...not now. Not as much. She seems so much more settled and happy here with him than she did when I met her. Did she ever seem that way- back home?"

The pause, though brief, was painful in the depth of the emotions that played across his face. "For a time. A very short time."

"Oh. And then she came out here."

Another pause. "Yes."

"God, that sucks."

He smiled again. "Sometimes you sound very much like her."

Cass grinned. "Yeah, well, we're both just practical, straightforward gals." She let the moment linger before asking, "So...what do you do now?"

He shrugged. "What I have always done. I will serve her according to the terms of my contract until I am killed or she sells it to someone else."

"Now that really sucks. That's all you've got? That's the best you can hope for?"

"It is all I need."

"It's not much."

"It is enough to-" His voice hitched, and when he continued, Cass could hear the pain belying his words. "To be near her. To protect and care for her as she needs."

"It's still not much."

"It is all I have. It is all I have a right to." He narrowed his eyes, almost with amusement. "What would iyou/i have me do?"

"I don't know...rebel or something, I guess."

"Against whom? Honor has treated me with more respect and dignity than any of my previous employers...or perhaps, anyone at all. It would be unfair to punish her for my frustration." He paused. "And Benny does love her. I would have killed him by now, otherwise."

Cass grinned. "I thought you might. Hell, when I first saw you, I thought you iwere."/i

"I intended to."

She shook her head. "He's the luckiest son of a bitch who ever walked the earth."

Again, a terrible pause, then Charon murmured, "Yes. He is."

~#~

Honor stretched, her back popping. ED-E gave the softest of chirps and she patted him reassuringly, then leaned her head against his cold frame. Benny had finally given in to sleep, and she was sure the blood loss had "helped." And silently, for the millionth time, she wished she hadn't killed Caesar and Lucius so she could kill them all over again. Only more slowly this time.

If she had known then what those psychopaths had already done to Benny- bad enough to know what Casesar had yet planned to do- she would have taken the bastards alive, and killed them for days. Weeks, maybe.

Months, if she'd had an autodoc like they had.

That's how they'd done it, how they'd finally prised the information out of Benny about the Platinum Chip. The usual threats, the "usual" torture hadn't worked on a tribal...certainly not on one as stubborn as Benny. So Caesar had resorted to more brutal methods. And each time those methods left Benny lying close to death, an hour in the autodoc ensured he could withstand the next go around.

Persuasive, Benny had called it.

Honor had a different word for it.

She tilted her head against ED-E again, comforted by his soft chirps, and watched Benny sleep. Caesar had done a butcher's job on him with his bubblegum-and-baling twine autodoc (though she suspected the poor condition of the machine had nothing to do with the incompetence of treatment), the scars raised, red, angry, mapping out every cut, every abrasion, every degloving they had inflicted on him. Testifying to the abilities of the machine in caring hands, the few sessions Benny acquiesced to in the Followers' autodoc had left his body only lightly scarred. Now someone would have to know what they were looking at to recognize the pale, striped lacework across his body for what it was.

She knew what she was looking at, and would happily have endured it herself to have spared him, even then, before he was her lover.

He'd asked her once how she could ever trust him, how she could close her eyes at night lying next to him after what he had done to her. "You were honest with me," she'd told him. "You waited for me to wake up, and you looked me in the eye. And when I found you on your knees in Caesar's tent, you didn't beg, or bargain, or make excuses. You faced what you'd done and who you were, just like you faced me in that graveyard. You respected me," she'd said. "And I respected you for it." She smiled now at the memory. She'd been telling the truth, and she reeled a little at the number of people- smoothskin, mutant, nightkin, ghoul- she had killed without looking in the face. From a distance, from behind, unarmed. She'd thrown a grenade into a Legion campsite while they slept (though she honestly couldn't say she felt guilty about that, especially now). And Benny, who'd tried to kill her, was more noble than she.

She'd also been truthful when she told him she'd have done the same thing, given the same knowledge he'd had. After all, she'd killed House, hadn't she? And he had been nothing more than a helpless old man.

She brushed a tendril of hair back from Benny's forehead, and he hummed contentedly in his sleep. He hadn't deserved to suffer at her hands for what he'd done.

And no one deserved to suffer what Caesar had done to him...except maybe Caesar and his right hand torturer, and it was too late for that, unfortunately, or she would have happily tracked the sadistic fucks down and delighted in making them pay.

Benny shifted, turning slightly and tossing one arm above his head. Just below the point where his tricep met his torso, a thin white line curled; it trailed beneath him and onto his back, marking where Lucius had partially skinned him alive. They'd flayed him across the back from neck to hips before the shock had stopped his heart.

And that was not the worst they'd done. Just the fact that when they were done torturing him they'd "healed" Benny one final time, so that if he were ultimately crucified he'd linger on the cross as long as possible, fully justified her fury as far as she was concerned.

Raul had told her, shortly after they'd met, that the Legion had its good points, that it had civilized Arizona. He'd come to visit them at the Tops once, by chance on a day when they'd slept in, and Benny had greeted him at the door to their suite while still putting on his shirt.

Raul had known what he was looking at, too. Honor hadn't heard him say a decent thing about the Legion since.

And some of them were still around. She wondered what Boone would think if she offered him a job tracking down and slaughtering any of the bastards he could find.

She'd bet he'd be damned good at finding them. She might gain some satisfaction from that; it wasn't like Caesar had acted alone...okay, sure, she'd probably taken care of the major players in Benny's suffering when she wiped out Fortification Hill. But it also wasn't like killing off the rest of the Legion wouldn't be doing the world a big, fat favor.

Benny rolled over again and slowly blinked awake. "Pussycat," he slurred.

"Tiger," she replied, pulling herself back from her thoughts of vengeance. A brief moment of memory nagged at her, a book she'd read, somewhere, somewhen. "'Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night..."

"What?"

"It's- a poem, I think. 'Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry.'"

"It doesn't rhyme," Benny pointed out, smiling.

"It used to- I think. It was pronounced differently...when it was written..." She puzzled a little over the fragment of returned memory; she had no context in which to place it.

Benny tilted his head on the pillow, stretched and yawned. "Did you learn that in the Vault?"

"The wh- huh?"

"Oh. Oh, you don't know yet." He sat up and propped himself against the headboard. "Baby, those people who've come to see you- they came to take you home."

She gave him a half-smile. "I am home."

"And I appreciate that, baby, but seriously- you idid/i have a whole life before I met you."

She was very still for a moment, then shrugged. "I can't imagine it was better than this one." She took his hand and squeezed it gently.

He returned the gesture, but said, "I can imagine it. Besides-" Here he paused, and she frowned; if Benny, with his silver tongue, was having trouble finding the right way to tell her something...well, that was troubling. "The older, stuffy guy...he's your father, Pussycat."

She stared at him a long moment. "He hurt you."

Benny shifted a little. "I don't recall."

"I do," she snapped. "Cass and...Charon, right?...seemed to think he was trying to kill you."

"I don't know, baby. I'm sure if he was he figured he had reason. And he'd be right." She looked poised to argue. "Honey baby, be real. These people are your family, and friends. What are they supposed to make of me?"

She held out stubbornly. "Charon seems all right with us."

Benny sighed. "He's just glad you're happy."

She sat quietly, chewing her lip. "And what is Charon to me?"

He held her gaze, but his expression faltered. "That's...complicated. You should talk to him."

"Why, what did he tell you?"

"Talk to him."

She crossed her arms, mouth set in a firm line.

"Ugh." He leaned forward and ran his hand into his hair, propping his elbow on his knee. "Technically, he's your employee, I guess."

"Employee? Why would I need an employee?"

"Well, you didn't, not like you think. See, you were just a wee kitten when you came outta that vault, just a few years ago. And you know what traveling the wasteland is like; all kinds of us bastards out there." He pressed on before she could argue with his self-assessment. "He's a hired gun, dig? But really, he says, you just bought out his contract to get him away from his previous employer. That cat was bad news, but as long as he held that magic piece of paper, there was nothing Charon could do about it."

They were both silent as she thought about that. "I trust him," she said at last.

Benny smiled a little. "I know. And I think you should. I think...he'll always have your back, no matter what."

"Was he more than my employee?"

"Pussycat. I told you, you should talk to him."

"Was he?"

"Baby-"

"Was he, Benny?" The expression in her eyes was heartbreaking. Benny folded.

"No. But I think you both wanted him to be."

She frowned. "They why weren't we?"

"He can tell you why he didn't put any moves on you. I can only guess why you didn't."

"So guess."

He looked as if he might not answer, but at last he said, "His contract. It's supposed to entitle the bearer to his services in combat, but the terms are, ah, deliberately vague. I think you wouldn't have made moves on him for fear that he was only rolling with you out of obligation."

She recoiled.

"Baby." He took her hands. i"Talk to him."/i

She nodded, but distractedly; most of her mind was concentrated on trying again to remember her lost life. Whatever the facts turned out to be, she had already been certain Charon occupied a prominent spot in it, and it frustrated her to no end that she couldn't remember him. Now, worse, she could only hope she'd never hurt him.

Benny watched her for a moment, then patted the bed next to him. She left her chair and joined him under the covers, snuggling under his good arm and encircling him with her own. He eased down against her, his head cupped by her shoulder, his hair ruffling against her chin. She touched the faded bruises around his throat and kissed him tenderly. "So what do we do?"

"That's strictly your call, baby."

"Hmph. Right now all I want is for you to be all right."

"Well. What kind of a world would it be if we could have everything we wanted? That's turn Vegas into a real dullsville in a hurry, if people didn't need to come here to have their fantasies fulfilled." He grinned up at her.

"Yeah, well, I'm not dreaming about becoming a millionaire." She touched her forehead to his. "I want you to be happy."

"Baby, I'm in bed with you. I'm ecstatic."

"And safe."

"Safe as I can be."

"Not good enough."

He straightened up and faced her head on. "It's the Mojave, baby. Nobody's safe, and nobody can be completely happy- not if it takes 'safe' to make you happy. We live in a crazy slice of a crazy world. We just have to take the crazy we like, and ignore the rest."

She frowned. "I need a drink." She climbed out of the blankets and headed for the door.

"Good idea. Make mine a double."

"While you're on med-x. Right." She headed out of the room as ED-E scolded him- most likely for teasing about his injuries when they clearly bothered her so badly.

She found Charon and Cass in the sitting area amid a companionable silence. "What's the word?" she asked Cass, popping open the small fridge behind the counter and gesturing an offer to the two of them as she pulled out bottles.

Cass glanced at Charon, then back to her. "Your...father...thinks he might know someone who can help Benny with...what they did to him."

Honor's hands tightened around the cold bottles. "Who?"

Again, a glance at Charon before Cass answered, "Some docs back east."

"The DC area?" After a pause, she added, "Where I'm from?"

Cass nodded.

Honor turned to Charon. "And what do you think?"

Charon flexed his fingers where they rested on his knees. "He is a well-respected physician and scientist with impressive achievements to his name. Everyone in the region owes him- and you- a great debt. I believe he is telling the truth, and that he could persuade doctors of high caliber to treat Benny, in their own practices or at the Citadel. He would be well cared for, either way."

"So." Honor watched a drop of condensation trail down one of the bottles and across her hand. "I guess we need to pack."

As the bedroom door closed behind Honor, Cass met Charon's eyes. "You didn't seem over eager to tell her," she said gently.

"I knew if there was any chance, she would risk everything for it- she is too careless with her own well being when it comes to protecting someone she..."

When he trailed off, Cass finished, "Loves?"

He didn't meet her eyes. "I'm told she once held a gun to a doctor's head to force him to treat me. She's- zealous."

"But she's tough, right?"

"Yes."

"And Doc Mitchell wouldn't have headed back to Goodsprings if he thought she was still in danger."

"If you say."

"Well, then, what? Are you afraid she'll stay to make Daddy happy? She'll do what she wants in the end. She'll come back home- I mean, here."

He nodded reluctantly. "She has a great many ties to the Capital Wasteland, and so does her father. I know he disapproves of Benny-" his shoulders tensed at the irony- "and will use all the persuasion he can muster to keep her there. He can be...driven."

"So that's where she gets it," Cass drawled. He scowled at her and she suppressed her smile. "So we've got two hard-headed zealots, each wanting something different...who do you think's more likely to win?"

He shook his head. "I don't know him as well, but her well being has led him to drastic measures before. And Honor- I suppose I hardly know her at all, now."

"She still loves you. And she loves Benny. If you both encourage her to come back here, where she's happiest-"

He stiffened again. "It isn't my place to advise her on such things."

"Hmph- your place. You love her. You want her to be happy."

His silence and downcast eyes answered her.

"I said she's happier here than I'd ever seen her. You didn't argue."

He raised his chin in half a nod. "How often do these- Legionaries get access to this 'strip'?"

Cass's mouth tightened. "Not often. The guy who nailed Benny is the second I've known about."

"Then she is safer here." She watched him turn this information over in his mind.

"Look, why the second thoughts? I thought you were pretty dead set on her staying here. Tell me what's worrying you. I might be able to help."

Charon turned away. "I'm being selfish. If we return to the Capital Wasteland and she sees the place we've earned in the community there, I think it is entirely possible she will order me to stay."

"You mean, come back to the Mojave without you?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I don't think she'd do that-"

The bedroom door interrupted her again; Honor leaned around it to address her. "So are you ready to go, or what?"


	5. Chapter 5

An odd lot departed the Strip at pre-dawn (more reasonable heads having prevailed upon Honor to get a night's sleep and start fresh by daylight). Honor set a surprisingly slow pace; truth be told, she wasn't at full strength herself, and figured Benny would be worse. She thought Charon suspected how she was, and was confident Benny knew damn well, but she determined to hide it from the others as long as possible.

In the short time she and Benny had been "king and queen" (and boy, did she hate those popular titles) of the Strip, they'd initiated vast changes. Swank now essentially headed the Chairmen, still based in the Tops, though the younger family members treated Benny with such deference that he might as well have still been in charge. With the Omertas ousted and the NCR pushed out of the Strip, Honor arranged for the Followers to take over the embassy building and convert it to an actual hospital. They gave the Kings the Gomorrah, gutted of its sleazy trappings and renamed the Heartbreak Hotel and Casino. With less sleaze and a lot more sequins, it had become surprisingly popular for its numerous singing acts even though they all performed the same songs.

The interior gates had come down immediately, allowing easier access between the casinos and the Lucky 38. The 38 now operated as a full time casino and hotel, brightly lit and bustling twenty four hours a day. Helmed by representatives from each Strip family, it was rapidly solidifying its position as the entire city's base of operations- an overly glitzy city hall.

The outer gate also came down, much to the amazement and delight of Freeside. Honor served on the 38 committee along with Benny, and though she most emphatically didn't want to be in charge, she did have some very firm ideas about the direction the new New Vegas should take, and opening the city was one of them. Promising the Garretts that the Atomic Wrangler would remain the only off-Strip casino was another.

A third, she'd had to fight Swank a little for: that each successful casino donate a portion of its profits to improving the city itself. Her determination had paid off hugely; the streets they now walked were free of litter, chunks of masonry had been dumped into the Thorn to fill it in for good, and large numbers of citizens worked almost daily to pull down the remains of ruined buildings and to repair the ones still standing.

The city was actually beginning to look clean. "Bright and shiny. What Vegas oughta be," Benny would remark once in awhile, usually in front of Swank who would acknowledge with a wry grin that she'd been right and he'd been wrong. "Just that once," he'd agree. "Not when she took up with you, baby brother, that's for sure."

The NCR had been allowed to stay in the Mojave, after a fashion. They still held their Outpost in the south and their communication camps, but the Embassy and monorail station on the Strip, as well as Camp McCarran, belonged to Vegas now. Still, the NCR liked to flex what little muscle it still had in the region, and when the contingent from DC had arrived at the Outpost, Colonel Moore- still a useless twit, Honor thought- had "requested" that they leave their vertibird there- something about not wanting them confused for Enclave and shot down. Unaware of the true balance of power but all too aware of reasons for animosity toward the Enclave, the group had agreed. Now, though, that meant a long, hot trek across the desert. At least they could take the 15 now.

But Honor wanted to make one more stop before they left the city.

~#~

The Old Mormon Fort still served Freeside and the Followers as an auxiliary clinic, and it was here that Honor made the last stop before leaving the city's environs. Early as it was, only the guards were out; they nodded to the group as Honor headed straight for the tower that had housed Julie's living quarters before she relocated to the Strip facility. The rest of the party waited on the ground floor but she continued up the steps without pausing.

As she reached the sleeping area, the bed's single occupant roused with a start. "Honor! You're awake? What happened-"

"I need your help." Honor sat on the edge of the bed next to Arcade. He seemed to find her familiarity comical- she had plopped into his bed without preamble in spite of his state of dress, or undress as it were- but he had long since grown used to her demonstrative nature, so he just smiled and nodded and waited for her to continue. "We're headed for the Mojave Outpost. I'd like to have a doctor in the party."

"Are you all right? When did you wake up?"

"I'm fine. It's not for me. Besides, I like having you around."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Honor. Honor, Honor. I thought we were done wandering all over the desert."

"So did I. This is important."

"What is it?"

She blinked rapidly. "Help for Benny."

Arcade's eyebrows reached for his hairline, but he had his composure back just as quickly. "Can they help 'being an ass' now?"

She didn't smile.

"Sorry." He thought a moment. "But the Outpost? Who've they-"

"There's transportation waiting for us there- we're burning daylight, Arcade. Can you go with us, or not?"

He reached down and drew his boots from under the bed. "Just for giggles, who's 'we'?"

"Me, Benny, Cass, ED-E-"

"I still find it amusing that you persist in referring to that eyebot as a person." He stood to dig through his dresser.

"Yeah, and you're still on notice for threatening him when we first met." She tried to smile. "And...some people from the DC wasteland."

He paused in his rummaging for clothes. "DC?"

"They- found me. Came looking for me."

He finished dressing and sat gently beside her. "You mean, they know you from before- ah- you 'lost' your memory?"

She nodded. "There's four of them. Three apparently are pretty capable fighters."

"And the fourth one?" Arcade prompted as he pulled on his boots.

"The fourth one is my father."

His eyes snapped up to hers. "Oh, good lord."

"Yeah."

"And how long have you been awake?"

"A couple of days. We really-"

"You just found all this out in the last couple of days?"

"Yes. Can we-"

"And you're sure you're all right?"

"Arcade! I'm fine. I really am." She squeezed his hand. "Benny- Benny was hurt a few days ago. Doc Mitchell did what he could for him and headed back to Goodsprings. If I needed more attention, I'm sure he would have stayed."

"Hm. That's true."

"It's Benny. I want to make sure we don't hurt him with this trip. But please, Arcade, can we talk more on the road? If we push, I think we can make Goodsprings or even Primm before dark."

He nodded. "Sorry, sorry. Just worrying about you."

She realized what she was doing to herself, to him, potentially to all of them before they even had the first mile behind them. She gave him an apologetic, lopsided grin. "Old times."

He kissed the top of her head and gestured her ahead of him. "I wouldn't expect anything else."

~#~

Between introductions and explanations, bringing Arcade up to speed took them until well outside of the southern edge of the city. Honor and Cass kept wary eyes on the cazador nests in the boot hills to the west, but nothing stirred. In fact, Honor thought as she listened to the idle chatter and quiet laughter filtering through their little troupe, nothing was stirring on the road ahead, either. She raised a hand casually over her shoulder and brushed ED-E's shielding; he chittered in compliance and tapped into her Pipboy signal. His sensors reached considerably farther than the Pipboy's, and it still took several seconds for him to locate any life signs. Their biometrics indicated they were friendly, but Honor called a halt anyway.

"What is it?" Benny moved up to her side and surveyed the road ahead. "I don't see anybody." He frowned as the implication set in.

"Scanners say they're not a threat, but I want to be sure. ED-E, with me. And Charon, if that's all right." She met the latter's eyes almost bashfully, and he nodded. Whatever their relationship had been- was- it still didn't feel right to order him around, no matter what he said about his "contract." "The rest of you wait here."

Cass drew her shotgun, and Sarah and Reilly followed suit with their own weapons. "We got this. We'll keep an eye on 'em."

Honor managed a smile. "Thanks, but remember that it would be nice for _all_ of you to go unscathed." She drew her own rifle and headed down the Long 15, ED-E at one shoulder and Charon at the other.

As they neared the unknown friendlies she checked again with ED-E, but the two blips remained the only living things in range. As they came out from under the viaduct and topped the rise near the farm north of the Junction 15 rail station, they could finally see why: the hillside heralding the quarry outside of Sloan had collapsed, blocking the road like a dam. "Collapsed" was a kind term; it actually looked as if the mountain had exploded, obliterating the 15 and as much of 159 as she could see.

"Hey there!"

Honor and ED-E spun toward the shout and Charon raised his shotgun. Honor shielded her eyes with one hand. "Melissa?"

"Honor! Glad it's you. We seem to have a bit of a problem." Melissa approached from the direction of Red Rock Canyon; a Great Khan Honor didn't recognize came with her.

"I see that. What the hell happened?"

"We still aren't sure. My father swears it's nothing they did at the quarry."

"Of course. It's not like the NCR to fuck up." Honor rubbed at her forehead. "How bad's 159?"

"It's not too bad. Couple of miles...this whole stretch of mountainside's gone." Melissa waved her arm to indicate far too much landscape for Honor's liking.

"Even if the NCR didn't cause it, think your father would take some blasting equipment and help clear it up?"

Melissa grinned. "That's why we're out here. Figured you'd want the roads cleared soon as could be. He said yes."

"And until then, the Long 15 is shut down again."

Melissa nodded grimly.

"Thanks for checking with Chomps."

"No problem. You've done right by us. Papa didn't like sending us out so far, but he knows what you're trying to do out here- if we could help, he wanted us to. Even if it does mean indirectly helping the Boot Riders. The Chairmen, I mean. Well...Benny." She gave Honor another grin. "We better get back or he'll worry. Not that you haven't improved things a lot, but..."

Honor nodded. "I understand." She took a moment to swallow down a sudden bolt of fear- _a Legionary, on the Strip, got a goddamned weapon into the _Tops,_ for chrissake_- "Believe me."

As the Khans headed back toward Red Rock Canyon, Honor turned north to gather up their group. "I don't want Benny and an old man off the road here for 'a couple of miles.' We're going to have to cut over to 195 and head south through Novac."

"Does this take us far out of our way?"

She considered the size of their party, coupled with James's- her father's- age and Benny's still-fragile condition, and furrowed her brow. "Three days, at least. _Fuck."_


	6. Chapter 6

Benny was a stubborn bastard, James had to give him that. He could tell his daughter's would-be killer-turned-lover was fading, but even he had no idea how badly until they were almost to Novac. They were a stone's throw from the first house when Benny stumbled. With Honor and Cass on point, the ghoul and eyebot right behind them, and Sarah and Reilly covering the rear, that left him and Arcade in the core of the group with Benny. Arranged as they were, only they saw Benny's misstep. Arcade took a long stride forward and caught him by the elbow, but Benny gave him a look and tiny headshake that silenced him. Grudgingly Arcade backed off, but as they rounded the corner to enter the hotel lot, Benny collapsed to his knees. This time he didn't bother trying to wave Arcade away; in fact, he hardly seemed aware of any of them as Arcade called forward to Honor and tried to help Benny back up. When it became clear that he was in no shape to be on his feet any longer, Honor pushed open the door to the nearest hotel room and they half-carried him inside.

Through it all, Honor remained admirably calm, and James felt his throat tighten as he watched her settling the bed's blankets around Benny against the night chill. He was proud, so proud of the leader his daughter had become; she had his own resolution and her mother's drive and moral compass. How she had managed to fall in so tightly with the denizens of Underworld (and most notably, their killer-for-hire, Charon) and now this conniving backstabber from the Strip, he would never understand. She deserved far better than the men she had thus far settled for, but he reminded himself of her youth. Who could truly know, at Honor's age, with whom one might be compatible for the next six decades? She had plenty of time to mature and realize that she deserved a real man...as long as this one didn't destroy her ability to trust before he was done with her.

A single knock sounded at the door and Cass opened it to a serious-looking young man in a red beret. "Hey, Boone," Cass greeted him, "how're they hangin'?"

He nodded as answer. "I saw you come in on my way to my watch. Something up?"

Honor gave him a little wave from her perch on the bed. "Isn't there always?" She smiled sadly. "Say, wanna meet my father?"

~#~

Another round of introductions for people she didn't really know. More rounds of questions for which she had no answers. But dropping her newly discovered past on Boone like a bombshell did eventually have the desired effect: he, her father, and the two soldier women became engrossed in conversation about the quest for law in DC compared to the Mojave, and she was able to retreat from being social entirely.

Benny had fallen asleep, and she watched him breathe. Such a simple, basic thing, breathing. So fleeting. So fragile.

And she was so, so weary. Of everything.

Arcade bent over Benny to take his pulse, and she looked back and forth between him and Charon, who sat beside her on the bed. "I'd like to ask you both a favor. Can I do that?"

Charon answered "Of course" without hesitation, but Arcade gave her a cautious smile.

"You have to ask if you can ask? How horrible is it? It doesn't involve kicking puppies, does it?"

She tried to smile at his humor but couldn't find the energy. "When I'm not around...or if anything happens to me...please take care of him. There are-" Her throat closed on her, and it took just a moment before she could continue. "-a lot of people who want him dead. Or worse. And I don't want to think I'm all that stands between him and them. Will you do that for me?"

Charon nodded, and after a beat, so did Arcade. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but yes. I'll help protect Benny."

"Thank you." She leaned back against Charon's side in gratitude, and soon fell asleep sitting against him.

It didn't take long for the others to notice that, not only had Honor ceased to participate in the conversation, but that she was now snoring quietly against Charon, who looked afraid to move. At Boone's suggestion they took the discussion outside, and at length he and James ended up in the sniper's nest in the dinosaur's mouth. James took the opportunity- featuring both privacy, and someone who knew his daughter now- to ask more about her current life. At least, that's what he told himself; he worked hard to ignore the nagging voice in the back of his mind that said he only wanted validation in his distrust and dislike of the man whose bed she shared.

Boone unknowingly and immediately obliged. "Her life out here? She's lucky to have one."

"There are dangers everywhere..."

"Yeah, well, she keeps the biggest one pretty close at hand." The distaste in his tone was palpable.

"Benny."

"Benny."

"Why do you think she...is with him?"

"I have no idea. Ask myself the same question every time I see her. She's smarter than that. I can't figure it out."

James looked out over the rocky hills and barren road below them. "Do you think there's any chance that the brain damage she suffered could have affected her judgment?"

"Hm. I'd like to think that, but...no. Her judgment otherwise is pretty sound. It's just..."

"Benny."

"Benny."

They stood awhile silently in the dark, the occasional bay of a coyote or whuffling of a mole rat the only sounds. At last, James worked up the courage to ask, "Do you think there's anything to be done to help her get out from under his influence?"

"Convince her to leave him?" He snorted. "Not likely. If getting shot in the head and buried alive didn't do it..."

"No, more talk won't convince her to leave," James agreed, hurrying to stave off images of his daughter gasping for air in the cold ground. "I was wondering if something more...direct...might be in order."

"You mean, kill him?"

"Good lord, no. Just- remove him from the picture."

"Get _him_ to leave? He's getting something out of keeping her around, and as long as she benefits him, he'll hold on with both hands."

"Then there's no chance? Nothing to bargain with, no way to get him out of her life?" His shoulders slumped. Much as he tried to convince himself that Honor would grow and learn- would come to her senses- the thought of her spending one more minute under that murdering degenerate sickened him.

Boone remained silent a long time before answering. "I may know a way to get him away from her. Won't be pretty, but we might get him out of the Mojave without either of us laying a hand on him."

"What, hire an assassin?" James snorted.

"No. Of course not. But the NCR would love to get their hands on him."

He looked at Boone, and even in the darkness, he could see the clenched muscles in the man's jaw, the tense set of his shoulders. "How bad would this be?"

Boone shrugged. "Not bad. I have a friend who still has contacts. People the NCR turns to when they need something done they can't do themselves. They turn him over to the NCR, and he'll actually face justice for all he did here, taking over the region. Including shooting Honor. Figure getting him away from her is a bonus." He looked down at the rifle he held. "Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"

"I am absolutely sure I want my daughter to be safe, and she is _not_ safe with him."

"You're right about that." Boone nodded and met James's eyes once more. "I'll send word out. It'll be taken care of."

~#~

Honor woke at the sound of the door closing. She raised herself off of Charon's shoulder. "Sorry." She rubbed at his shoulder as if she might have soiled him somehow with her touch.

He caught her hand, engulfing it in his, but released it immediately. "You do not need to apologize."

Cass brightened the melancholy moment. "Hey, Arcade, didja see Boone's face when Honor asked him if he wanted to meet her father? He almost had an emotion."

"Boone has many good qualities. Emotional demonstration is not one of them."

Honor smiled fondly at the pair as they continued their banter, all the while running her fingers through Benny's dark hair. She had a good life here, good friends, good...family. The thought of what awaited her in DC terrified her. What if something there made her remember her old life? What if she'd been happy there, too?

Perhaps...happy there with Charon?

_Contract,_ she thought. _He'd probably have to stay on the Strip with me even if he didn't want to._ That would never do. She wondered if she could ever get him to admit a preference, if he had one; but what could she possibly offer him for a life here?

Assuming, of course, that he did have feelings for her.

She scrubbed at her eyes. Worrying was making her head hurt. And it solved nothing; they had to make the trip, and they would find what they would find. The important thing was that it would help Benny.

~#~

Boone turned it over to Manny to arrange. The right word in the right ear, a few caps in the right pocket, and a bullshit distraction strike on the old ranger station up the road took Honor and the other able-bodied fighters out of town. Almost on their heels the real attack came, only instead of the mercenary strike team Boone had expected, Legion troops marched into Novac, right under the dinosaur's open jaws with Boone ostensibly on break. They knew when, and they knew where.

Which room.

Which victim.

Arcade woke to a Legionary hauling him to his feet by his hair; they were already binding Benny's hands behind his back, and none too gently- half conscious though he was, he'd tried to throw a punch at one as he came to. Arcade cast around the room for Honor's father.

James was gone.

Two Legion soldiers pushed him outside while others half-dragged Benny behind them. They'd gagged Arcade, but he wasn't sure he'd have called for help, anyway; they were badly outnumbered, and being captured by the Legion wasn't something he'd wish on his worst enemy. He heard scuffling behind him and tried to turn his head to check on Benny, and his captors rewarded his concern by clubbing the side of his head. He fell into blackness.


	7. Chapter 7

Arcade woke slowly to a red fog. He closed his eyes and groped for the most painful spot on his head. He felt a lump just above his left ear, large enough to suggest that had it landed two inches forward on his temple, he wouldn't have woken at all. He blinked a few times and the fog dispersed to reveal Honor's father bending over him in the faint predawn light. "Are you all right?" James asked.

Arcade felt his head again, then looked himself over. Blood from the wound had already dried on his clothes, but that seemed to be his only injury. He tried to rise. "Where's Benny? God, I promised Honor-" He gripped James's forearms as the older man tried to restrain him.

"Right here." Arcade shifted where he sat to see Benny and Boone leaning against a length of cyclone fencing. "Just waiting for you to wake up and join the clambake." Benny's tone was light, but the tightness around his eyes betrayed his fear. Arcade quickly took in the rest of their surroundings. Lengths of fencing divided a larger area into smaller pens, all on bare dirt. All the pens were occupied- men, women, children. They were capture pens. Slave pens. Honor had insisted upon leaving the fort that Arcade, like everyone else in the party, abandon his usual clothing and dress like a typical wastelander. At the time it had seemed paranoid. Now he was grateful. The Legion didn't need to know they had captured educated men, doctors.

They just as surely didn't need to know they had the "king" of New Vegas, and the key to the "queen's" absolute compliance. He shuddered to think what horrors the Legion could wreak with Honor as their unwilling champion.

"She'll find us," Benny said softly, as if reading Arcade's thoughts. "We won't be here long."

"And where exactly is here?"

"Nowhere," Boone replied. "We're dead in the middle of the wasteland. There's no reason to come looking here."

"Could've used a different turn of phrase..." Arcade crawled over to Benny's side- he didn't quite feel steady enough to stand just yet- and took his wrist to check his pulse. "Are you all right? They got you pretty good, too."

"I'm fine," he replied, but he didn't pull away. Arcade counted- a strong pulse, but rapid- and noted the cold sweat beneath his fingers. Benny's pulse jumped wildly, and Arcade looked up to find a quartet of Legion soldiers approaching. "Stay cool," Benny murmured, and Arcade nodded

One of the Legionaries was detailing the list of prisoners in one of the pens to a man who, while physically unassuming, was a superior officer judging by his regalia. The tally paused for a moment as the soldier looked their way. "Ah, the newest captures are awake."

The officer strolled their way around the fence line. Their pen complex was surrounded by tents; Arcade couldn't guess how many soldiers camped here, but besides these four, a good two dozen of the bastards roamed the area, making haste to move aside if the officer came near them. The man paused outside their cage. He wasn't particularly tall, or particularly handsome, or particularly anything. Utterly forgettable except for the fact that he apparently held the power of life and death over them.

He looked down at them as if they were something a mole rat had just coughed up onto his boot. "Three able bodies...what about the elderly man?"

One of his entourage leaned forward. "He speaks like he has an education."

"Hm." He turned to nod at the soldier "Four for one, then? Not a bad effort."

Arcade frowned, but didn't dare ask for clarification. He was afraid he'd find out soon enough as it was.

The officer looked at each of them in turn, but stopped when he got to Benny. Arcade felt his shoulders knot, as if he could hope to do anything should they recognize just whom they had. The officer knelt and narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

"Apparently," Benny replied, slurring a little, "I'm a slave of the great and mighty Legion."

"Your name."

"Isn't that the place of my master?" Benny cocked his head, an unsettling gleam in his eye- Arcade thought he was actually enjoying baiting their captors, the lunatic. "To tell me who I am now?"

"You have the right non-answers." The officer raised one hand, and one of the soldiers gestured a few more their way. "Let me help you. I know who you are. Benjamin, leader of the Chairmen, formerly the Boot Riders, head of New Vegas, co-conspirator in the murder of the great Caesar. I was there when Lucius laid bare your secrets for him." He licked his lips and smiled. "I was there when he laid bare your spine."

Benny twitched, but said nothing.

"I left Fortification Hill the morning before the great man was murdered. By that- _woman. _And you." The other guards had reached the pens now, and the officer gestured them forward. They began unlocking the gate. "You are going to pay for that crime in kind. And while you're dying, you are going to tell me how to get to the cunt who helped you kill him."

Arcade had never seen Benny flinch, let alone look terrified; he did now. But he jutted out his chin and his voice was steady as they hauled him to his feet. "You might as well kill me and get it over with, 'cause I'll never squeal on her, dig?"

They started to shove him out of the pen. Arcade leaned forward to jump the nearest one but Boone wrested him back. Benny looked over his shoulder as they pushed him through the gate. "Don't be a sap. This hand is dealt. Wait until the Lady's on your side."

They locked the gate behind them, and all Arcade could do was hope Honor found them in the next few minutes...otherwise, he would fail the most serious promise he'd ever given.

~#~

Normally Benny prided himself on his collection and poise; very little broke his cool or his stride. But there was nothing normal about the goddamned Legion. He was terrified, not just of the oncoming pain (though that was dire enough), but that he wouldn't die soon enough to keep from giving them any useful information, even by accident. He knew well enough from experience with the Boot Riders, the wasteland, and the Legion that the right leverage- the right torture- could set a person talking, sometimes without them even knowing it. He'd heard plenty of NCR soldiers, rangers, some of them, raving on their crosses to their Legion captors- names, dates, troop movements, passwords. By that point, most of them were in a state of delirium that likely robbed them of the awareness that they were even talking: their bodies and what was still functioning of their brains were just looking for the thing that would make the pain stop. If the point of the torture was information, once the consciousness could no longer guard it, the subconscious began spewing it out in good measure.

_Anything_ to make the pain stop.

He'd given up the Strip, New Vegas, and the Chairmen to do just that. It had saved his life, sort of, but he'd made that trade solely to make the pain go away. He'd suspected Caesar would still kill him, but he'd been willing to roll the dice on that one.

But tell them how to kill Honor?

If this jackass was telling the truth- and he certainly seemed to be- he knew what had ultimately broken Benny, and he knew everything leading up to it. Bile rose in his throat- he couldn't do it. He couldn't take this again. Not again. He started to shake in his captors' hands, and they laughed at him, tossing insults at him that he didn't hear. He was too lost reliving the memory of an incision made in his side, in the feeling of a hand plunging into his gut, the sight of his skin bulging and contorting as Lucius felt around inside of him.

That one had killed him, too.

His vision of the real world swam and he stumbled. One of them punched him in the small of his back. He hardly noticed.

They dragged him to the largest tent in the compound, the officer's, presumably, and within minutes had set a number of iron rods into the ground in an impromptu framework. Concerted kicks to his kneecaps brought him to the ground. Manacles pinned his ankles to the earth behind him while they wrenched his arms up and back along a crossbar, his wrists chained at either end. The contraption, a simple frame, held his arms stretched taut just above and behind his shoulder line and useless for leverage- in effect, he was crucified on his knees. His knees barely brushed the ground, so as he struggled- and he knew he would, would not be able to stop himself no matter how useless it was- he would wear away the dirt until his shoulders bore all his weight. It was cruel, and already painful, and they hadn't even started yet.

And even after Honor's heroic efforts and self-sacrifice to protect him from Caesar, he had still, in essence, wound up on a cross.

He began laughing at the irony. It struck him as a bad sign, but he let himself do it, anyway. It seemed to unsettle his captors, and even if it signified that his mind was about to crack altogether, so what, really? So long as it bothered them- and locked up the information they wanted like Honor's lost memory- it was probably worth it.


	8. Chapter 8

Needless to say, the plan had gone awry. How Manny's contact had managed to alert the Legion instead of the NCR- or why- was beyond him. Simple mistake? Intercepted information? Grudge? He couldn't guess, but he promised himself that, if he survived, he would damn well find out. He would never have dealt with the Legion, and if he could have anticipated such a wild turn...well, he'd rather see Honor with Benny for the rest of her life than hand anyone to the Legion. He'd wanted to protect Honor from Benny, from herself, and he'd inadvertently made a deal with the devil.

Neither he nor James had fought capture, so neither had been beaten unconscious. He wondered if their lack of resistance stemmed from surprise, or from a sense that they deserved it.

No. No, they didn't deserve it. James was looking out for his daughter, and Boone, for a friend to whom he owed a great debt, and he had never, _never_ intended for it to go this way.

There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that Benny was a deceitful, self-centered, ruthless son of a bitch who deserved to be held accountable for his actions; but no one, not even Benny, deserved what was happening to him.

To further nurture his guilt and regret, when they'd taken Benny, the fear in his eyes and his caution to Arcade had stirred the tiniest doubt in Boone's mind. Maybe Benny did give a fuck about someone other than himself. Maybe he could feel something for Honor.

He shook himself mentally. What was done was done. They needed a plan for the present. He settled on the ground next to the other two men, close enough to Arcade to speak without being overheard easily.

"What do you suppose they're doing to him?" Arcade asked.

Boone clenched his jaw. This was not the conversation he wanted to have. "Dunno."

"I've never treated a Legion torture victim. I understand most of them don't survive."

"Yeah. I-"

"Benny wasn't supposed to, you know. The first time. Caesar tried to give him to Honor as a bribe. She'd get to choose how he died in exchange for working for the Legion."

Boone remained silent this time. He'd not heard this part of the story He'd spent more time trekking the desert with Honor than Arcade had, yet Arcade knew more about her? He supposed his own brooding demeanor and reluctance to share personal information kept her from sharing her own, but still...

"He underestimated Honor," Arcade continued, nodding to himself. "He underestimated her compassion, and her ability to see depths in people others don't."

Boone snorted to himself. _He underestimated her gullibility._

James rubbed at his eyes. "Is this where you wax eloquent about what a wonderful human being Benny is, deep down inside?"

Arcade frowned at him. "No. I still have doubts about him, actually. But...I made a promise to Honor."

"The only way we can help Benny or ourselves is to not be in here," Boone pointed out. "We need to quit wallowing and focus."

"Right. So what do we do?"

A shriek from the officer's tent somewhere behind them silenced them all for a moment. James looked slightly ill and hung his head between his knees. A few of the other captives gave them sympathetic looks, but most were too lost in their own misery to react.

Softly, Arcade repeated, "So what do we do?"

Boone looked around at the dozens of Legion soldiers, at the guards posted around the pens, at the pitifully weak humans inside. "I don't know."


	9. Chapter 9

Night came and found them no closer to a solution. Between his failure to keep his promise to Honor and his helplessness as the Legionaries dragged some of the prisoners out and raped them, Arcade was beside himself with rage and frustration. He paced their tiny pen until he tripped over Boone one too many times. They'd snapped at each other until their bickering drew the attention of a guard.

On top of that, the screams had stopped. They hadn't brought Benny back, and of course no one was going to let them know what had happened. He thought Boone and James seemed marginally less concerned about getting out and stopping the torture than they should, anyway, and when Benny stopped screaming, Arcade thought James particularly seemed...well, he wasn't sure. Resigned, maybe. Resolved.

Satisfied.

He scolded himself. They had enough enemies outside the fence without imagining them inside as well. He leaned his forehead against the cold wire and stared out across the camp.

There seemed to be some sort of commotion at the perimeter of the camp; soldiers began hustling to and fro, ducking into tents, rousing others. He felt a flare of hope until he heard one of them call an alarm. "Nightkin!"

"Well, fuck," Boone spat, jumping to his feet.

"What is it?"

"A type of super mutant," Arcade said. "A bit less mentally stable, and almost invariably equipped with a ridiculous number of stealth boys. You're generally dead before you know they're on you."

James rose as well and the three of them stood there, facing each other, having just taken what action they could. As that realization sank in, Arcade began nodding. "Right. Well. It's been good."

The first clash of weapons reached them; more soldiers came running, including one who'd escorted Benny to the officer's tent. He paused in the torchlight by the pens long enough for Arcade to see that he was wet to the elbows with blood. "I don't think Benny's dead yet," he told the other two. "He's still bleeding."

"Don't really care right now," Boone replied, but Arcade was ignoring him, his attention instead on the continued sounds of battle. Amid the cries of the human men, he heard the occasional deep mutant bellow, and once in awhile a Legionary body would come sailing out of the night sky to land in a very entertaining heap nearby. There were a lot of soldiers- more than he'd first realized- but judging by the rate the lumps of dead Legion were accumulating, the Nightkin was doing quite well for himself.

The small battlefront advanced rapidly, and at last he could understand some of the shouts and cries. Arcade turned to the others for confirmation that he was not imagining things, but the other men simply looked grim. He stared back out into the night, waiting for another bellow.

He didn't have to wait long. "Naughty boys! Didn't your parents teach you any manners?" Another corpse flew out of the darkness and slammed into the fence hard enough to rattle its entire length. A second followed almost immediately and wiped out the nearest tent. Three soldiers backed into the circle of torchlight, followed by a Nightkin armed with what looked like a vertibird blade. The Nightkin punctuated her tirade with massive swings of the weapon. "You really _should_- show more _respect_- for your_ elders!"_

The last of the slaves were on their feet now, backing away frantically as the last soldier between them and the enraged mutant fell- or rather, was dispatched with great force into the darkness. James and Boone backed away, too, but Arcade rushed the fence. "Lily! Lily, it's Arcade!"

The Nightkin lumbered up to the fence. "Aw, Arcade! My little pumpkin's friend! How are you, dear?"

Arcade wasted no time trying to answer her reasonably. "Lily, they took Benny into one of the tents back there. He's probably dying- we need to get to him, now-"

Before he'd finished speaking, Lily had seized the fence in her meaty hands, and she tsked as she ripped it down. "That boy! He is _such_ a problem child. But with the mother he had-" she stomped the ruined fence flat so the prisoners could climb out over it- "I suppose it's no wonder."

Arcade bolted into the rows of tents. He didn't bother checking if Boone and James were following, but he was confident Lily was; if he ran headlong into any soldiers in hiding, she would kill them. A larger tent, the dim light of torches within, loomed before him and he ducked inside.

It was the right tent. He stopped a few steps in, not wanting to startle Benny; he couldn't tell if he was conscious or not. "Oh, my," Lily breathed at his shoulder in what for her was a whisper. "Oh, my. The poor dear." She stayed in the doorway, weapon raised, and let Arcade advance alone. He heard more footsteps enter, but with Lily there, it had to be some of the prisoners, not Legion. The were as safe as they could be for the moment, so he approached Benny slowly.

"Benny." He knelt beside the other man, his voice as soft and soothing as he could make it. "Benny. Can you hear me?"

James's voice sounded quietly from the doorway. "Are you sure that's him?"

Arcade nodded without turning around. "Benny? If you can hear me...it's Arcade. Lily's here. She broke us out. We're going to get you out of here."

Benny's head hung limply forward from his stretched shoulders, but Arcade thought he saw it trying to lift. He started to reach for Benny's face to help him, but hesitated- until he could clean Benny up and get him under better light, he couldn't be sure he wouldn't cause him further injury.

On the other hand, they would have to touch him eventually. This man clearly wasn't going anywhere under his own power for awhile.

He took Benny's chin and gently lifted his head to look into his eyes. The right one was swollen shut; from the trauma around it, Arcade guessed it might be gone. The left slitted barely open, revealing a bloody rupture under the cornea. "Benny? Can you hear me?"

"Arcade." His voice was rough, broken by hours of screaming and who knew what damage to his throat. He rasped and struggled to swallow. "I d...didn't tell them...I didn't tell them an...anything." His head drooped in Arcade's hand.

"That's good, Benny, but you don't need to worry about that right now." He looked back at Lily as he talked and gestured at the iron poles holding Benny up. She moved toward them, revealing Boone at the doorway with James. "You just worry about staying with us, all right?"

Benny shook his head a little; if Arcade hadn't been supporting him by the chin the movement would have been too feeble to detect. "Doesn' matter now. Jus' had to...hold out l-long enough..."

"You did, Benny. It's all right."

Benny raised his head from Arcade's hand and seemed to gain some lucidity, though his speech was still soft and badly slurred. "I protected her, Arcade. I didn't betray her. I didn't tell them anything."

Lily snapped the chains at his ankles and moved to the end of the crosspiece opposite Arcade. He nodded at her and she took the chain binding Benny's left wrist between her thick fingers. Carefully she broke it, releasing the loose end but holding tight to the end attached to the manacle around his wrist. Arcade moved over smoothly and took the chain from her, bearing Benny's weight while Lily freed his other wrist. Benny's torturers had cut away his clothes, and Arcade watched the muscles in his arms and back, some of them actually exposed, knotting as they moved around him.

They would have to ease him down to the ground. As much as Arcade was loathe to do it- ragged strips of his skin hung from him like torn cloth, and the thought of introducing dirt into all those wounds went against everything in him- he didn't see much of an alternative.

A shadow fell across them. "Here," James said, and Arcade looked up to see Honor's father unfolding a blanket he'd taken from a cot on the other side of the tent. He spread it out on the bloodied earth in front of Benny.

As slowly as they could, they lowered Benny onto the blanket. He didn't flinch, though he groaned softly as they laid his arms at his sides. "His right shoulder is dislocated," James told Arcade quietly as he helped arrange Benny on the cloth.

"So is his left. Looks like the fingers are broken, too."

"The same on this side."

Arcade looked up at Lily. "Do you have any stimpaks, or-"

"I already have them out for you, sweetie." She handed him three stimpaks and a pair of med-x syringes. "I'm sorry I don't have more, but I'd forgotten what trouble you children can get into."

The med-x would hardly make a dent in the level of pain he knew Benny must be in, but the stimpaks might keep him alive long enough to get him to some real help. One of the others murmured something about the other prisoners, that some of them were injured, too, but Arcade unloaded all three into Benny without a second thought. He knew there were other wounded prisoners, but none of their injuries were immediately life threatening. Benny, on the other hand, was dying right in front of them.

Someone brought over a lantern and Arcade got a better look at him. They hadn't torn open his back completely this time, but they had started, slicing a gridwork that spread out from his spinal column along his shoulder blades and ribs, mimicking the old scars. The flesh was flayed back, exposing the meat of one shoulder, the muscling and ridges over the other half of his ribcage, making him look like a dissected cadaver except for the stuttering rise and fall of his breathing and steadily dripping blood. The skin they'd peeled away clung wetly to his sides; innumerable other lacerations crossed and re-crossed his body from his head to the soles of his feet. Bruising around his ankles and swelling over the arches of his feet bespoke broken bones. The muscle damage in his shoulders, ruined connective tissues, lord, the therapy required just to come back from the breaks to his ankles and feet-

Arcade quickly choked off that line of thought. _Keep him alive right now,_ he told himself. _Keep him alive until we can get somewhere and get help. Worry about the rest as it happens._

James gestured to one of the lacerations. "If that penetrated very deeply, his right kidney is destroyed."

Arcade rubbed savagely at his forehead. "I know. And I think they may have cut out one of his eyes, or ruptured the orb. I can't tell yet. If we can't get him in an autodoc damn soon, he'll lose the sight in his left one, too." He wiped at the blood covering Benny's left ear. More had pooled inside. "He's bleeding from this ear." He leaned close to examine Benny's shattered left hand without having to move him again. "God. Did they leave even an inch of him whole?"

"Legion," Boone replied simply.

"Barbaric." Even in the poor light, James looked pale.

"Stringing him up by the shoulders like that had to be excruciating and was bound to hurt like hell when they took him down, no matter what else they did to him in the meantime. They didn't have to tear his arms out of their sockets, too. Just the Legion going that extra mile. Sadistic bastards." Arcade sighed. "We've got to move him. We've got to get him out of here."

"Can he be moved safely?" Boone asked from the doorway.

"Well, we don't have much choice, do we?" Arcade ran his hand through his hair, leaving a streak of blood on blond. He looked around the tent for ideas, and pointed at the cot James had taken the blanket from. "Lily, you think you could bend the legs on that thing to make a stretcher or a travois or something?"

Lily walked over to the cot and lifted its steel frame as if it were paper. "Oh, I think I can manage that, dearie." She began bending two of the end legs outward to form handles.

"Even so," Boone said, taking a few steps toward them, "you think he can survive being moved? Doesn't look like he's got much fight left in him."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Craig," Arcade snapped, "but I intend to keep him alive as long as I possibly can."

Boone stiffened. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on. You've never made a secret of your dislike for him. You've said outright Honor could do better. You're telling me you won't be at least a little disappointed if he makes it?"

"I don't trust the bastard," Boone replied tightly. "And he shot one of my closest friends. I have reasons not to like the guy. Good reasons. That doesn't mean I want him dead."

Lily stepped between them to set down the converted cot. "Don't make Grandma separate you two."

"Sorry, Lily." He gave James a look that he hoped said _I promise I'll explain the crazy Nightkin later,_ then nodded to the cot. "Can you help me?" James took up Benny's other side and they prepared to move him onto the new stretcher.

"Keep him on his chest? Or turn him over?"

_An excellent question,_ Arcade thought. He looked pretty butchered on his front, too. An ugly consideration decided him. "Let's lay him on as much of his exposed raw flesh as we can. It'll minimize insect contact while we travel."

Assuming that the large bare patches on his back were the most extensive open wounds, they lifted and turned him onto the stretcher in one smooth motion. The move still brought a groan from Benny, and woke him again, after a fashion. "No..."

Arcade leaned closer to him. "It's all right. We're just getting ready to move you."

"N-no. You can't- you can't have her. I won't tell you..."

Boone leaned over them. "Tell us what?"

Arcade shot him a deadly look.

"Passwords," Benny rasped. "Securitrons. Go to hell. You'll n-never touch her." He gasped, his bloodied lips working but his voice exhausted.

"'Her,' who?" James asked him. "Honor?"

Benny nodded, wincing as the torn muscles along his shoulders twisted in response beneath what was left of his skin.

"Can we please stop questioning the dying man?" Arcade spread the blanket over Benny, trying not to drag the coarse fabric too roughly over the worst wounds. Thankfully Benny seemed to have lapsed into unconsciousness again, or at least insensibility. Thank god for small favors, he supposed.

When he was done, Lily picked up the stretcher in both arms and held it in front of her. "Where are we taking him, dear? To my little pumpkin?"

"Yes." They stepped out into the night air, oddly quiet now after the sounds of battle. "Trouble is, we don't know where she is- or rather, _we_ are."

"That's not a problem, dearie," Lily said. "We're south of Black Mountain."

James consulted his pipboy. "How far is that from Novac? How long will it take to get there, carrying him?"

Arcade leaned over to look at the screen. "We're not going to Novac." He pointed. "We're heading to Goodsprings."

"Goodsprings?" Boone repeated. "How will they find us there?"

"Immaterial right now. We make sure Benny survives, _then_ we worry about meeting up with everyone else."

"And in the meantime, what? Honor goes haring off across the wasteland looking for us in every Legion camp she can find?" Boone looked to James for support, but Arcade was having none of it.

"What would you do, leave his chances of survival to that Straus woman? I wouldn't trust her to apply a band aid, let alone with the kind of care he needs." Arcade took a heading off of the pipboy and started walking, Lily falling into step beside him. "We'll take him to Doctor Mitchell. If he could put Honor's head back together, he ought to be able to stabilize Benny so we can get him to an autodoc. And if you don't like that, Craig, then _you_ can figure out how to break the news of his death to Honor."

James glanced at Boone, then headed after Arcade and Lily. Scowling, Boone took up the rear guard. They paused only long enough to pick up weapons off of the Legion corpses, with the night stretched out before them like the Long 15.


	10. Chapter 10

Is there any way to shut off ffn's $#%^ %$#^ autocorrect? It's "correcting" things that aren't wrong, and I don't see an option to shut it down... (Now watch- that previous sentence will end in an ellipsis instead of a period, and this one will have a hyphen after "watch" instead of a dash. Sigh.)

* * *

Thanks to James's pipboy they were able to evade encounters with hostile wildlife and raiders, but the circuitous route it required cost them dearly in time and energy. By the time they finally had to stop for rest, they hadn't even made the main road again. Boone built a small fire and Lily placed Benny near, though Arcade suspected his shivering had nothing to do with the cold desert night. No one said anything, just sat and stared into the fire, each lost in his or her own thoughts.

Arcade, though, spent less time watching the fire and more time watching Benny. There had been times when Benny was working at being particularly charming- and better, when he didn't have to work at it at all- when Arcade could see what Honor saw in him, at least as far as physical attraction. Her "pretty boy" friend, she said Nash had called Benny. And Benny knew it, certainly knew how to flash those deep, dark eyes to get what he wanted.

That man was gone. The swelling in his face made him unrecognizable. He moved a little in his sleep and gave the tiniest of moans. Arcade noted that his jawline was slightly asymmetrical- it might just have been swelling, or his jaw might be broken. Nothing to do for it either way out here.

A log on the fire popped and sparked, and Benny jerked awake at the sound. He tried to rise, but Arcade grabbed his shoulders to push him back down. Benny thrashed at him, trying to knock his hands away from the dislocated joints. James and Boone joined Arcade while Lily got to her feet, ready to fend off anything or anyone attracted by the sudden movement.

James, a little more forcefully than Arcade would have liked, pushed Benny back down. Arcade leaned over him and spoke rapidly. "It's all right, Benny, it's us. It's Arcade. We're taking you back to Honor. You're safe. It's okay."

Benny's breathing was still too rapid, but he seemed to focus on Arcade with the one eye that still opened. "Honor..."

"Right. We're getting you to her as soon as we can."

"Tell her...have to tell her..." Benny tried to reach for him, but his arms were useless now; he'd used everything he had to sit up and struggle with them.

Arcade hesitated, then reached down and gently slipped his fingers beneath Benny's. Benny's jerked at the contact, but stilled. "Tell her what?"

"Legion," Benny whispered.

"She knows," said Boone, "there are still pockets of them-"

Benny tried to shake his head. "More. River- across the river."

"In Arizona?"

Benny's fingers spasmed against Arcade's again, and Arcade leaned closer. "Caesar," Benny whispered hoarsely, "has a son."

A dumbstruck silence followed. Boone finally broke it with some heartfelt swearing.

"A son?" Arcade asked. "Who? Where?"

"Tor-tortured me."

They looked at each other. The nondescript officer. Caesar's son. Arcade looked back and forth between Boone and James. "Did anyone see his body?"

They shook their heads.

"Fuck."

"Tell...her."

"We will, Benny. We'll make sure she knows."

Benny closed his eyes and his whole body seemed to deflate as he quit struggling to stay conscious.

After a moment, James said, "He's not going to last much longer. I'm surprised he's survived this long."

"I know." Arcade stared into the fire. He dreaded meeting up again with the others. How on earth was he going to tell Honor that Benny was dead?

Worse than that, how would she react? Honor was passionate, not just in love, but in everything she did. She would fight as hard for her friends as for her own life, had backed the cause of Vegas' independence with her own blood because she believed it was just. She was also, on too many occasions, impulsive to the point of self-destruction. He could easily imagine that they would have to guard her against suicide attempts if they got back without Benny, the one constant in her life since she had lost her memory. If not outright attempts, at the very least she would put herself in situations more dangerous than she could handle, grow careless in the face of death. She would see to it that she paid for not protecting him, that she blotted out the pain of living without him. Arcade wrapped his arms around himself.

Lily lumbered back over and sat down. "Benny's a strong boy. He'll be fine," she told him. "It's not much farther."

"Right." He pushed his glasses up and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I'm going to try to get some sleep." He settled down beside the fire, doubtful that he could actually doze off but determined to try, and was asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.

~#~

Boone, on the other hand, was wide awake. He lay with their little campsite to his back, staring out into the formless night. This was his fault, all of it. He had succumbed to a moment's temptation and everything had gone to hell. But goddamn it all, he did it for Honor. The kid deserved better than what she was settling for. Poor thing actually believed Benny was in love with her...

He was fond of Honor, and tended to think of her as just a kid, a little sister, perhaps. He knew she had the intelligence to see what Benny was, but she obviously didn't have the common sense. He'd hoped that she would simply grow out of this, out of her fascination with this man who was so very, very wrong for her. He had determined to stay out of it and let her figure it out on her own.

But damn, did it rankle him to see Honor with Benny, to see that sleazy con man slip his arm around her waist as if he owned her. It made him want to punch the smug bastard right in the teeth for touching that little girl. And that was what had driven him to agree to help James in the first place.

He thought again- for the thousandth time, maybe- of Benny struggling to speak, to stay conscious long enough to reassure them that he hadn't betrayed her, to give them information to protect her with. But he couldn't yet bear the thought that Benny was telling the truth, that he did love her, so Boone pushed the memories down.

Benny had tried to kill her. He couldn't love her. It just couldn't be.

But if he did...

He snarled to himself. Benny was a superb actor; he'd give him that. Even in the condition he was in, he kept up the farce that he gave half a damn about her. If it was anything more than that- anything more than an act- the implications were greater than Boone could face just now. The man was a goddamned mess. And it was his fault. If he'd done it for nothing... He resettled himself on the rocky ground, but his troubled thoughts brought sleep no closer.

~#~

When the tidy little houses of Goodsprings came into view, Arcade thought he might actually cry in relief. Somehow Benny had survived their trek across the desert, and they took him straight up the hill to Doc Mitchell's. Doc wasted little time ("What the-?" "Legion") on particulars, instead leading them immediately into his clinic room. He had a dozen or so stimpaks on hand and they dumped them into Benny, one after the other, before even trying to examine him. Only a few seconds in, he injected a small handful of med-x syringes into him as well to try to counter Benny's pain at being touched.

James watched from Arcade's shoulder as they other two doctors cleaned away the blood and debris. In spite of being only half-aware, Benny cried out occasionally, but after the stimming he never lost consciousness. James watched as Benny's broken fingers clutched involuntarily and ineffectually at the edge of the vinyl bed, and wished he would. Oblivion would have been a kindness for him.

_Good lord,_ he thought,_ I'm starting to feel sorry for him. My daughter's rapist. My daughter's killer._ He deserved everything he'd gotten and then some.

Didn't he?

"Thank god," Arcade said as he bent over Benny, "he's still got both eyes."

"Hm. Still might lose his sight, though. If he hasn't already."

"I know. But at least there's a chance."

James watched Benny's body shudder as Arcade touched his face gently, almost tenderly, a feather touch that wrenched a gurgling, suppressed cry from the broken man. "I'm sorry," Arcade was telling him, "but you have a lot of breaks in this orbit...I know it hurts, I know it does, but we need to get the lacerations clean..." Benny mumbled acquiescence and held himself still, black and blue fingers trying again to curl around the edges of the bed and failing.

For the first time in his career, James felt the urge to bolt away from a patient, unable to look a moment longer at the crooked limbs, the raw exposed flesh, the agony he exuded even in trying to be still. He thought he might have run, but for Boone in the doorway, arms crossed and silent. They had done his, they two, and neither one had the right to look away from it.

Whatever bad choices his daughter was making, James reflected, they couldn't have been worth this.


	11. Chapter 11

Arcade and Doc Mitchell were still working with a quiet, desperate haste when Boone and James finally withdrew from the house. They clearly could do nothing to help, and were both somewhat relieved to make an escape. They stood shoulder to shoulder for a moment at the top of the little hill, listening to the mournful bay of a coyote somewhere to the east.

"What we did- -"

"Don't. We can't punish ourselves over this." James shook his head. "We did something we thought we needed to do to protect her. There's nothing wrong with that."

Boone frowned. "Cass told me Benny's 'reasons' for shooting her. Pretty much the same thing."

James stiffened but said nothing. At length they wandered down the hill and toward the saloon, the one place in town with any sign of life. For lack of anywhere else to go, they stepped inside.

The few patrons quieted at their entrance, but seemed welcoming enough as Trudy waved them on in. "Boone! Haven't seen you in a gecko's age. Come on, have a seat. What can I get you?"

Boone waved a no thanks as he slid into one of the booths. James sat opposite him and smiled politely at Trudy, but also declined to order.

"Suit yourselves. Did y'all come into town with that Arcade fella? And a Nightkin?"

She didn't sound as surprised at the latter as James might have expected; but, he reminded himself, Honor had trailed around the DC wasteland with a super mutant in tow. The fact that she preferred to keep company with some of the more "altered" humans in the world apparently hadn't changed with her loss of memory. He supposed people came to expect her to have some mutant or monster or other trailing after her. Lord only knew what they'd thought about Charon in some of those more civilized places like Rivet City, let alone the one she called "Fawkes."

But he had raised Honor to be open minded, not to make snap judgments about people.

Had he himself instilled in his little girl the very trait that made her give Benny a second chance he didn't deserve, a trait that led her into that man's arms, into his bed? He stilled his thoughts. They were useless. He concentrated instead on listening to Boone explain, in his own terse way, why they were there. Trudy backed off immediately, giving Boone a pat on the arm and assuring them that if they needed anything, she'd do all she could, and then she left them to collect themselves and rest.

From the look on Boone's face, though, their respite would not be as peaceful as she thought. Their shared guilt would see to that.

~#~

Hours later Arcade dragged himself into the saloon to find them. Trudy had stayed the whole night, unwilling to leave them, and Arcade found them still at their table, still sober, and still mulling dark thoughts.

He sank down at the adjacent table, exchanging weary nods with them. He accepted Trudy's offer of a drink; she placed it on the table in front of him and he stared at it, unsure of what it even was.

Boone turned his head slightly to speak over his shoulder to Arcade. "Benny?"

"Resting," Arcade replied, his voice cracking with fatigue. "We got the major exposed areas covered and the worst lacerations stitched closed. Doc's sent Sunny to Primm to see if they have more stimpaks, and may send someone to Novac if they don't have enough." He yawned and rubbed at his face. "I keep thinking, I hope I never see anything like it again, and it seems so selfish- - he's enduring it. _Again_. It's- -" He stopped himself and hunched over his drink. "It's just horrific. All around."

"Man's inhumanity to man," James quoted.

"Fuck that," Arcade said bluntly. "Legion aren't men. They've surrendered the right to be called men. They're- - worse than animals. At least animals don't understand the consequences of their actions." He turned his chair to better face them. "You know what's really pitiful? Every time he has a lucid moment, he starts off thinking he's right back in that camp. Even when he's out of his senses, he can't get away from them." He took a drink of whatever Trudy had put in front of him. It was strong. He finished it in a second gulp. "He kept telling us that he wouldn't give her up. Honor. Kept mouthing her name like a goddamned prayer. And I don't even know where she is to bring her to him." He clenched the empty glass tighter. "I promised her I'd keep him safe."

"This isn't your fault."

"You couldn't possibly- -"

Arcade turned his back on them. "Goddamned Mojave. Goddamned human race. Still trying to recover from a fucking pointless war and we're still turning on each other like savages."

A moment of uncomfortable silence passed. "So...you're convinced now that he loves her?" Boone asked.

Arcade snorted into the fresh drink Trudy brought him. "Aren't you?"

"No," Boone replied flatly, and a bit too quickly.

"What on earth would it take to convince you?"

"Nothing. There's nothing that could convince me. It's impossible."

"Why?"

"Because it just is!" Boone stood abruptly and rounded to face the other two men. "It can't be true. Or else what we did- - what I did... ." He stared at Arcade as he trailed off, and to Arcade, he looked wild.

"What you did?" Arcade set his glass down with deliberation. "What do you mean?" Boone shot a glance at James. "What did you do? Boone- - what did the two of you do?"

Boone closed his eyes. "I used an old NCR contact. To get Benny out of the Mojave."

Arcade just sat for a moment as the confession sank in. "So many questions," he said at last, pushing the rest of his drink away. "I suppose the most obvious is, 'Why?', but I think I know why. So I suppose the next one would be, how did you ever think that dealing with the Legion could be a good idea?"

"I didn't deal with the Legion!" Boone slammed his hands onto the table in front of Arcade, but Arcade didn't flinch. "I dealt with that contact. It was supposed to be mercs out of NCR territory. _Not Legion._"

"Justify it however you want," Arcade replied calmly, "the outcome's the same." He rose.

"You cannot tell Honor," James began, but Arcade dismissed him with a wave. He started to move but Boone stepped in front of him.

"He's right. If Honor's going to have any chance at all to reconnect with her father- -"

Arcade shook his head. "I don't know what I'm going to tell her. I just know I can't look at the two of you right now."

"We were trying to protect her," Boone said.

"By breaking her heart. Yeah. I get it. How could you ever have thought this would end well?"

Boone clenched his jaw. "I trusted my contact more than I trusted Benny."

"You trusted the Legion more than you trusted Honor."

"That is not true- - I told you, I didn't deal with the Legion." He balled his hands into fists. "And if you were a stranger I'd blow your head off for saying it."

"Because the Legion cost you your wife."

"That's right. It's reason enough."

"It's brahmin shit. You killed your wife, not the Legion. You could have tried to rescue her. Hell, you could have tried to buy her, but it was easier to pull the trigger, wasn't it?"

Boone gritted his teeth and stepped forward until they were nose to nose. "You have no idea what you're fucking with."

"Yeah, I think I do. You think Honor would have taken that shot? Not just for Benny. For any one of us. You think Cass or Veronica would have? Any of them would have saved any one of us or died trying. Honor has shed blood for all of us, and you know it. And that's the woman you've backstabbed." He turned his back on Boone and left the saloon without another word.

Once outside, he took a shaking breath and tried to steady himself. He was astounded at his own outburst; knowing it had been prompted by distress and sleep deprivation neither relieved his conscience nor excused his behavior. But he was far too angry and disappointed at the moment to go back in and apologize. He began walking, though at a loss for what to do with himself. Sunny had already taken off for Primm, and he was too exhausted to make the run to Novac. He supposed he should just give in for the moment and try to get some rest. Doc Mitchell had offered him the spare bed in his clinic, so he trudged back up the hill.

Lily was stretched out in the floor of the living area, snoring. Mitchell had also retired for the night but left the clinic room lit by a single dim lantern. Arcade picked it up and crossed to where Benny lay on the stretcher to check on him once more before bed.

To his surprise, Benny was awake and lifted a splinted right hand an inch or two off the blanket in greeting. "Hey," he whispered, his voice crackling.

Arcade leaned over him and allowed himself a cautious smile. "Back in the land of the living?"

Benny had to gather himself to answer, but Arcade was patient. "Guess so. Th'others get out?"

"Everybody's safe. In fact, you're the only casualty."

He gave a tiny nod.

"This is going to seem like a stupid question, but how do you feel? I know you're in incredible pain, but do you feel aware? Do you know where you are?"

"Goodsprings." Benny turned his head a little to the left to look around with the eye that wasn't swollen shut. "Right where I put Honor. That's...platinum."

"It may be poetic, but I think we all could have done without it." He felt Benny's pulse; it jumped as he curled his fingers around Benny's wrist, but outwardly he gave no sign. "Does this hurt? Your wrists are broken, I was trying to be careful- -"

"'S'okay. Not bad."

"Ah huh." Arcade released his wrist as gently as he'd taken it. "Think you can sleep?"

"Gonna try." Benny paused a moment. "It does hurt."

"Good god, I know that's an understatement. I wish we could give you something more, but you'll have to wait until Sunny gets back with supplies. I'm sorry. I wish there were more I could do."

Benny actually tried to grin and shrug it off, and Arcade felt all the worse for being helpless. "'S'all right. It's a lot better." His eye drooped closed and Arcade went to bed himself. He slept, but his dreams were restless, filled as they were with blood and betrayal.


	12. Chapter 12

The next morning, Honor walked into town.

She'd been in Primm looking for leads on them when Sunny had shown up. She and the others returned to town with Sunny, and more.

Arcade and Doc Mitchell were checking Benny's condition and consulting quietly when Honor came in, ED-E at her shoulder. Arcade looked up as she stopped in the doorway. For half a moment, he saw the terror in her eyes; then they shuttered and she was again the tough little courier who'd held back the Legion and driven out the NCR. She stepped forward quietly and handed off a bundle of stimpaks to them. "How bad...?" But she was already looking down at him, and knew.

Arcade put his arm around her shoulders. "I wish we could give you better news, but frankly it's amazing he's lasted this long. I couldn't stop them. I know I promised, but I didn't have a chance to do anything before they had us...I'm so sorry, Honor."

She looked up at him as if noticing his presence for the first time. "You didn't help them, did you?"

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. Did she already know someone had betrayed them? "No, of course not!"

She turned her attention back to Benny. "Then you don't need to apologize. It wasn't your fault, sweetie." She reached out to touch Benny's hair where it fell across his forehead, but stopped just shy, as if afraid she would hurt him even with that. "It'll be all right now."

"The additional stimpaks will help-"

"Not what I mean."

She was interrupted as the front door banged amid much scraping and swearing. Charon and Sarah appeared in the doorway and shoved a large crate into the room. They maneuvered it next to the stretcher and Charon pried it open.

Arcade actually gave a short laugh. "The autodoc."

"It had gotten as far as Primm," Honor said, but she still wasn't looking at him. She had gathered her courage and was gently touching one of Benny's splinted hands. He didn't wake.

Sarah filled in for her. "When- Sunny, is it?- told us what had happened, we figured we'd just bring it here ourselves."

As if on cue the machine hummed to life as Charon connected its generator and powered it on.

Doc Mitchell directed placement of the machine and began entering settings to start treating Benny immediately. "I don't know how you kids do this. You manage to get yourself out of the worst binds, just in the nick of time."

Arcade stepped back, expecting Honor to follow so Mitchell could start treatment, but she didn't move. He glanced at Charon, then touched her lightly on the arm. "Honor." He tugged at her sleeve. "Come on. Come over here by me." She turned to look at him, but her focus was clearly off, her expression lost. Charon put his arm around her shoulders, urging her to move, and Arcade guided her out of the way.

She looked back at Benny over her shoulder. "Arcade...he looks..."

"I know, honey. It's okay. He's going to be all right now. You said so yourself, and you were right." He gave her a quick squeeze and released her.

"Why did they...what did they think..." She scrubbed the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. "How could I let this happen...I promised him." She began sobbing.

Arcade had never seen her cry. Ever. And his coping skills for comforting crying women were, admittedly, limited.

No worries, though; she turned and buried her face in Charon's armored chest. He stood for a moment, also clearly at a loss, but then he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

~#~

Once the autodoc was in place and working, they set up a chair for Honor next to Benny. ED-E hovered near her, close enough for her to reach up and brush his casing with her fingertips once in awhile, drawing comfort from his presence.

Charon again hovered in his more intimidating way, in a chair by the door with his shotgun across his lap. Arcade leaned near the shelves next to him. They conversed quietly, with Honor virtually unaware of them.

"Have you ever seen her cry before?"

Charon looked up at him a moment before replying, his expression unreadable. "Yes. But not often."

"I've never seen her when she wasn't...well, before I knew her, I would have said cold, but...in control." He shifted his feet. "When I met her I'd heard good things about her, but I didn't know if I really wanted to trail around the wasteland with someone who seemed so casual about killing. I was glad there was more to her than that."

After a long silence, Charon said, "When her father left their vault, the Overseer sent security to kill her."

"My god- why? She was just a kid."

"Why does any leader murder his own people? Her first kills were those men- people she knew. Had grown up with. Then she was turned out into the wasteland to find her own way. It is no safer there than here, and it was far worse then."

"So, toughen up or die. Quickly, either way."

Charon nodded.

"I suppose under those circumstances, it's remarkable she's as compassionate as she is, whether she remembers those events or not." He rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. "Considering the state of things, I suppose it's remarkable that any of us still act like human beings..." He looked over his shoulder, toward the front door.

"Did you hear something?"

"Hm? No- no, I was just...thinking about something..." He turned back to find Charon watching him, his gaze piercing. "Ah..."

"You do not need to tell me."

"Right. Thanks."

"Unless it involves Honor's safety." Charon shifted his body a little, just a little, but it somehow reminded Arcade of just how huge and muscular Charon was.

Arcade blurted, "You know, you'd be really attractive if I wasn't so terrified of you just now."

"What?" Charon sat up straighter, nearly bobbling his shotgun onto the floor.

"Sorry. I just- sorry. You're just making me really nervous right now."

"Is Honor in danger?" Charon growled, thankfully ignoring Arcade's outburst.

"No. Not directly- no." He sighed. "And I wouldn't take that as an answer, either." He edged closer and dropped his voice even more. "What happened to Benny...wasn't by accident."

Charon's fingers flexed around the gun. "Meaning?"

Arcade considered his explanation carefully. "Someone...thought it would be best...if Benny were no longer part of Honor's life."

Charon clenched his jaw, his face set in a near-snarl. "Her father."

"No- or rather, not just her father. Look, they thought they were doing a good thing. And I can't believe I'm trying to defend them. Just- just don't do anything until I get more information, all right?"

Looking like everything in him wanted to argue, Charon ground out, "All right."

"Thank you."

"For now."

Arcade nodded. "I don't know if there's more information to be had, but if there is- well, I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt."

"Because it is Honor's father?"

"And a friend. And I honestly believe they thought they were doing her a favor. Though how Boone could ever think-"

"Boone?" Charon repeated, his hand sliding down the shotgun's stock as if in preparation.

Arcade gave him a wry smile. "Yes. I figure you might as well know. I know you won't confront him yet; you gave me your word. And this is the Mojave. I could be dead before nightfall. Someone else should know- someone who'll weigh the options and the consequences and do the right thing."

Charon relaxed, marginally. "Thank you. I will refrain from killing either of them until it is necessary."

"Let me just say, 'I hope you're joking,' and leave it at that."

Charon straightened again, his head turning toward Honor, and Arcade knew he might as well have ceased to exist. Whatever employment agreement Charon had with Honor, he obviously took it very seriously. "What's happened?" Arcade asked.

"Benny's awake."


	13. Chapter 13

As soon as Benny began to stir, he knew Honor was at his bedside. He supposed ED-E's soft hum gave it away, but he liked to think that he simply iknew/i her presence. It was the more romantic notion, and Honor had certainly awakened that long-suppressed part of his soul. Whatever the case, he gathered himself before he opened his eyes.

She was blurry, but there. He thought he could see her smiling at him. "Hey, Pussycat," he said, putting a lot more force behind it than normal, and he still sounded faint. Weak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, Benny." Her voice was strained, as if she were fighting down tears. She fluttered her fingertips on his forehead, ruffling his hair. "I'm fine, sweetheart. You're the one we're worried about." The fingers of her other hand brushed over his. He glanced down at it. The splint was gone. He cast his eyes upward at the autodoc's arms still poised above his head. His heart raced, but he concentrated on her voice, her touch. "How do you feel?"

He forced a smile. "Ready to swing, baby."

"Yeah. Liar." Her tone sounded playful, but he still couldn't focus to see her expression. She appeared to be turning away from him, though; he tried to follow suit, but the effort cost too much. He let his head sink back onto the pillow.

"He just woke up," Honor said as she stood and pulled her chair aside. Doc Mitchell stepped into his line of sight, and over the doc's shoulder he saw Charon and Arcade- at least, he figured it was the pair of them, from the height of one shape and the light hair crowning the other. They flanked Honor.

"How're you feeling, son?"

Another forced smile. "Feel like a million, Doc. You do good work."

"Mm. Thank you." He held up a penlight and shone it in Benny's eyes. It seemed to lance through his head and bore apart his brain, but he didn't move. "How's your vision?" Mitchell covered each of Benny's eyes in turn. "Can you see out of both eyes?"

"Yes."

"Is your vision clear?"

Benny hesitated- not long, but long enough that Honor would catch it. She didn't miss much when it came to him, he knew, which meant he might as well tell the truth, at least about this. "No. It's blurry."

"Mm." Mitchell turned to the autodoc and entered a few new settings. "And how's the pain? And don't bother telling me again how fine you are. We all know it's going to take more than a few hours in an autodoc to bring you back from where you were."

"Been a rough day." Benny watched as he posed the mechanical arms over him, his heart pounding in his throat again.

"Honor knows you're still hurting, you don't have to be brave for her." Mitchell looked down at Benny again, and though Benny couldn't see his expression, he could hear the change in his voice. "What's wrong, son?"

Arcade came into view over him and felt his pulse. "It's the autodoc, isn't it?"

"What's wrong with it?" Honor's voice, tense, still sounded of unshed tears. He hated himself for making her sound like that.

"Nothing's wrong with it," Arcade answered her. He pushed the arms back, out of Benny's line of sight. "What if we give you a little while to relax and get your bearings back before we do this, all right?"

"Yeah," Benny replied. "Whatever you need to do..." The doctors stepped back from him, toward Honor and Charon, and from the hissed whispering he gathered they were arguing. After a few moments, everyone left the room but Arcade; Benny watched Honor's form walking away until Arcade stepped between them and rested his hand on Benny's wrist.

Quietly, Arcade said, "You're having issues with the autodoc."

Benny's mouth quirked. "You don't say."

"Caesar used an autodoc on you."

Benny shivered, the muscles in his back twisting and threatening to wrench him double with pain. It held off, though, just laboring his breathing as he tried not to remember any goddamned thing about his time with the Legion. "Yeah. What difference does that make?"

"He used it to torture you. That's why it bothers you now."

Frowning, Benny replied, "No, he used it to heal me while I was being tortured."

"So they could start all over again. You think that isn't torture?" Arcade gentled his voice. "I know that's why you hate autodocs. I know that's why you're still covered in scars from what they did to you, because you can't stand being in one long enough to remodel the skin." He lifted one hand, wanting to offer Benny some sort of comfort and contact, but didn't know where he could touch him that wouldn't hurt. "If we get to DC and there are updated autodocs, it could still take a long time..."

"I know."

"You sure you're going to be able to handle that?"

Benny stared at the ceiling. "I have to, don't I? Can't let my Pussycat keep worrying herself."

"And what about you?"

He shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly, and the muscles grabbed at one another beneath his skin.

"You need to stop being so cavalier about this. You can only avoid dealing with everything that happened to you for so long before you break open and everything comes spilling out."

Benny clenched his jaw. "Poor choice of words."

Arcade winced. "Sorry. I just mean-"

"I know what you mean. Since when do any of you care about me, anyway? Thought I was nothing but a fink to all of you." The sympathy had caught him off guard.

Arcade hesitated before answering. "Not to me. Not anymore."

"'Anymore'? What changed your mind?"

Arcade fiddled with the blankets, resettling them carefully across Benny. "This did. All of this. You went through all of this because you wouldn't tell them how to kill her. You imust/i love her." The morning they'd left Vegas, Arcade would have (quietly, so as not to hurt Honor's feelings) delighted at the thought that she might finally leave Benny, even if it meant that she'd be leaving for distant DC; he'd miss her as he'd become fond of her, but for that same reason he would have been glad she was out from under Benny's influence. Now...

Well, now he knew. It shamed him that the knowledge had come at such a cost.

"Look, the physical trauma is one thing. If the emotional trauma keeps you from getting healed properly-"

Benny turned his head away. "I wanna talk to Honor." His tone of voice brooked no argument. Arcade left the house, and only a moment later Honor took his place at Benny's bedside, pulling her chair back into position and taking his hand as he turned to her.

"I hear that I'm a special request."

He smiled at her, sort of. "Arcade is becoming a giant pain in my caboose."

She returned his smile with an indulgent one of her own. "What's he doing?"

Benny paused and swallowed while she waited patiently for him to find the words. "He knows that I'm..." He swallowed hard. "I keep thinking of Maddie."

Her eyes softened and she brushed some errant strands of hair from his forehead. "Oh, sweetheart."

"But I don't get why, dig? I wasn't raped."

She had a hard time looking at him, afraid her eyes would only dart from scar to scar and make him more uncomfortable. "You were held down and hurt. Isn't that the same thing?"

That, he didn't know. But then, he'd only been ten when his big sister had been carried into camp, naked, barely recognizable, raped and brutalized by raiders and left to die. She wasn't dead, not quite yet, and they'd lain her down in a tent to die as comfortably as she could, her trauma more than they could heal without stimpaks. He and Swank had crept into the tent to see her, to sit with her, and the blood, the bruises, the way she clenched the blanket around her body as if to protect herself from her own brothers had been more than he could deal with. He'd cried, she cried and begged him not to. One of the other tribe members had come in and dragged him out, telling him to stop bothering her and let her rest, and within the hour she was dead.

She was the reason that all of the Chairmen's female members worked behind the scenes, or under some sort of guard. When Benny had become chief, he'd vowed to himself that this wouldn't happen again, not under his watch. And it hadn't. The only Chairman who'd been traumatized since then was he.

He tightened his fingers and looked up at Honor. "Be with me. The autodoc. Be with me."

"Absolutely." She met his eyes solemnly. "You know I'll do anything for you." He nodded a little. "Should I go get Arcade and Doc Mitchell, then?"

~#~

When Arcade entered the room behind Honor and Mitchell, Benny looked less stressed, and remained so as Doc Mitchell once again arranged and reset the autodoc. Whatever Benny and Honor had talked about seemed to have calmed him, but Arcade wasn't surprised. Now that he knew that their relationship- or now, at last, Benny's side of it- was honest, he could reflect on subtleties between them that he berated himself for not seeing before. He imagined Benny told her everything, that she probably served as his confessor, his path to absolution. It made a certain amount of sense; if she could forgive what he did to her...

He stood by Benny's bedside as the autodoc began to hum, feeling drained and particularly helpless. Between what he knew and what he was watching Benny endure, things were just a little more complicated than he was able to handle. Whatever had happened to endless days of pointless research at the Old Mormon Fort? His efforts there had been futile, but at least they had made his days predictable, and the people he loved weren't continually exposing themselves to all the Mojave could hurt them with. He watched Honor, focused as she was on nothing but Benny, watched their hands clench together when one of the autodoc arms had to sweep particularly close to him, or worse, touch him. His fear had definitely become more manageable, but whether that was enough to get him through hours a day- for who knew how many days- under one of the machines in DC remained to be seen. Arcade hoped that whichever doctor they procured there would be as understanding about having Honor underfoot for the procedure. Otherwise Benny might refuse treatment altogether, or worse, have an emotional blowup.

Arcade guessed that the latter would be more horrible than any of them could imagine. There was a lot of rage bottled up behind that slick veneer, rage and pain, and he did not want to see that turned loose. If something as simple as holding Honor's hand kept it under control, it was well worth having someone in the way while they worked.


	14. Chapter 14

A few more days in Goodsprings of alternating rest and sessions in the autodoc found Benny strong enough to make the Mojave Outpost on his own feet. Honor seemed to strengthen right along with him, allowing Doc Mitchell to give his blessing for her to travel to DC as well, allaying Benny and Charon's last concerns for her health. Honor noted, on the trip between Goodsprings and the Outpost, that Charon kept himself between her father and Benny. It struck her as odd, as it sometimes required him to be both between them and at her shoulder or back, but he always managed to manipulate the group until he'd placed himself just so.

Thinking back, she realized he'd done the same with Boone until the latter had left Goodsprings to head home to Novac.

But as of reaching the Outpost he'd still not addressed it with her, so she left it alone. She had every confidence that, if it turned out to be important, he would tell her his reasons.

She loved how easy it was to trust him, even if she couldn't remember why.

After a brief word with Jackson about the impounding of the DC vertibird ("Tell that bitch Moore that the NCR only has as much authority in the Mojave as we say they do"), the group found themselves airborne. Of the Vegas contingent, only Arcade had flown before, or at least remembered flying, so the first leg of the trip consisted of a lot of questions and peering out of the one tiny window. The last leg of the trip involved a lot of sleeping, for both groups.

The vertibird eventually landed outside a metal-rimmed crater near a river. Honor woke to Sarah gently shaking her shoulder. "You're- home," she said awkwardly. "Though I suppose it won't seem like it to you." As they all began to wake and gather themselves, she continued. "We radioed ahead as soon as we got in range. Your father's first choice of doctors for treating Benny has agreed to come here to do it. We figured you would be more comfortable in your home than in the Citadel. And maybe it'll help you recover your memory."

"Thank you." They exited the vertibird into a world at least 30 degrees cooler than the Mojave. "Who's the doc?"

"A Brotherhood doctor, Devlin. He's _very_ good."

"Well, that was the point." Honor stopped when she realized they'd lost Cass. She turned to find her with her head thrown back, soaking up the cool breeze. "You okay?"

"Can we stay here?" Cass asked without opening her eyes.

Honor laughed and turned back, but the furrow of Benny's eyebrows as she rejoined him quieted her. She tilted her head at him, catching his eyes, and he smiled back and shook his head. _Another mystery_, she figured; _he'll tell me if it matters._

The approached the steel-clad crater and a Protectron greeted them. "Welcome, partners."

"Ooh, somebody needs cowboy lessons from Slim," Cass said.

The massive sheets of steel before them shifted up and aside, revealing a gate. "Welcome to Megaton," the robot continued. ED-E beeped at it and the robot beeped back.

"That is Deputy Weld," Charon said, and Honor waved at the bot before following the others through the gate.

The city before them was a nice settlement, well-protected by the steel walls and clean by wasteland standards. She was concerned about the bomb in the center until Charon explained that she had disarmed it. She had just opened her mouth to ask where "home" actually was when Cass asked from behind her, "Nice town- does it have a decent bar?"

Charon pointed across the crater. "Gob's Saloon. We need to go there anyway."

Cass happily took point and as they fell in behind her, Honor asked, "Why there first?"

"You have a good friend there," Charon replied, "who will want to know you're safe. And I left your dog in his care."

"We have a dog?"

"Yes, you do."

"What's his name? Or is he a her?"

"His name is Dogmeat."

She frowned. _"Why?"_

"I do not know."

"Might explain why you get along so well with Rex," Benny said.

"Who's Rex?" Reilly asked.

"Her part-time dog in Vegas," Cass called back over her shoulder.

"'Part-time dog'?"

"He splits his time between the King and Honor. The King gave him to her, but when things are hectic, she sends him back so he can still get all the attention he wants."

"Things were hectic?" Honor asked as they reached the door to the bar.

Cass and Benny shot each other panicked looks. "Ah, baby, maybe we should talk about this later."

"Great," Honor said, opening the door to the saloon, "something else I don't remem-"

A sudden blow to the midsection both cut her off and knocked her down. Her first urge was to go for her gun, but Charon's amused expression and the happy dog tongue slopping over her face killed the impulse pretty quickly. The great beast sat back, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, his mismatched eyes positively alight with joy. He barked at her, looked to Charon, then back to her and barked again.

"Dogmeat?" she asked, and his tail thumped wildly against her knees. He was easily as big as Rex- maybe bigger; it was hard to tell from her angle- but gray and wolfish. He slathered another kiss on her before she pushed him aside. Benny and Charon both offered her a hand up, and she took both. "Thanks." She took a step through the door and got whammed again.

This time she was caught in a ferocious yao guai-like hug from a man. "Honor! You're all right! I told Nova you must be okay, but..." She turned worried eyes to Charon.

"This is Gob," he said, and the man released her to look at Charon.

"Why wouldn't she know me?"

"Don't take it personally. I don't remember anyone." At the confusion in his eyes, she gestured to the bar. "We might need alcohol for this."

~#~

The story exchange took them well into the night, and through many rounds of drinks. Honor found Gob to be a dear, and it broke her heart to hear him go on to Cass about how kind Honor had been to him- that she'd never yelled or raised a hand to him for any reason, let alone just because he was a ghoul. He made a comment about Honor's friends being "lovely," and Cass went on to flirt with him shamelessly, earning herself no end of glares from the saloon's barmaid, Nova. When she realized she was getting under the other woman's scantily-clad skin, she escalated her flirtation until Honor asked Charon to take Benny and her home, claiming she didn't think she was old enough to hear the kinds of things Cass was saying. With assurances that Cass could find her own way and that the others already had overnight arrangements, Honor and Benny followed Charon back across town, ED-E and Dogmeat in tow.

The house was a nice little place for a wasteland dwelling, with a living area and kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, one obviously Charon's, the other hers. Benny laughed aloud when they looked into her room to find a bed (and floor) utterly covered in stuffed bears- "I guess some things _don't_ change"- and then Charon abruptly excused himself for the evening, closing his door behind him.

Dogmeat took the cue and hopped onto the bed, curling himself up among the teddy bears. Honor tossed a few of the bears into the floor to make room for Benny and herself and began disrobing.

One gigantic bear dominated one corner of the room, and Benny leaned forward to look it in the eyes. "This one makes me nervous. I think this one's got a shady past, dig? He's seen things. Done things. It changes a bear."

Honor dropped onto the bed, grinning at Benny's impromptu backstory for the stuffed animal, and scratched Dogmeat on the ear. His tail thumped. "So what was hectic on the Strip when I got smacked on the head?"

Benny stiffened. "I don't really think now is the time..."

"When will be the time?"

He looked at her a long moment before coming to stand in front of her. "It's pretty big league. You sure you want to hear it now?"

"Will it be better later?"

Benny glanced at the wall dividing this room- _her_ room- from Charon's. "Fuck if I know."

"Then tell me." She drew her knees to her chin, her arms wrapped around her lower legs.

He took a long moment to start, but she was patient, and let him. At last, he said, "The Boot Riders had a sort of...tradition...several of the tribes in the Mojave did...that if a couple'a people wanted to be together, long road, you know...they'd wear something to show that they were taken." He stared at the floor through his awkward explanation, but now raised his eyes to hers. "Remember our first date? I told you I was yours as long as you wanted me."

She smiled. "I remember."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrapped bundle. "I got this the day you...got hurt. I was sure you'd wake up, and we'd just pick up where we left off..." He unwrapped it and held it out to her so she could see the ring with its tiny, shiny gemstone. "I wanted you to wear this. I wanted the world to know you're mine." He shrugged a little. "Swank says I have an ego problem." He reached up to brush her cheek with the back of his rough fingers. "I don't think it's a problem." He gently took her hand, but didn't try to place the ring on it. Instead, he closed his other hand around the paper, ring and all. "But one of us wants out, we're out. No ties, no nothing. None of that 'until death do we part' bullshit. 'Cause the way I feel about you, honey baby, that ain't near long enough." He smiled as he spoke, but couldn't help a quick glance at the wall at the foot of her bed. "I know that was before...well, _before_. If you want to call us done right now, I und-"

She cut him off by leaping forward and kissing him with as much passion as she could put into it. She drew back and held his face in her hands. "Nothing, Benny, _nothing_ has changed how I feel about you. You understand that? Nothing can."

He tipped his head down so that his forehead touched hers. "You could already be spoken for, for all we know."

"That isn't any different than before. We had no idea what my life was. Besides, spoken for by whom? Surely someone would have said by now."

He gave her a mock glare and cocked one eyebrow. "'Whom' do you think, Oppenheimer?" He indicated the wall with a nod. "Okay, maybe not hitched, exactly, but there's some serious unresolved emotional content between you and Mr. Merc-for-Hire."

She cast her gaze down.

"Have you talked to him yet?"

"Ah, no. There was this whole thing with you and Arcade and Boone and my new father being kidnapped..."

"You're funny. You should follow Hadrian at Aces. Tommy'd love you." He leaned over and placed the bundle in the giant bear's lap. "Here. Shady Bear can hold this for us until we know what we're doing with it."

"Benny, I told you-"

He turned to her and caught up her hands in his. "Baby, I want you to be happy, and I want you to be mine, just mine. And that can't happen if you wake up one day next to me realizing you'd rather be next to him." He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed her fingers. "We'll figure it out, Pussycat."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and brushed her lips against it where it joined his shoulder. "Well, can I _try_ to convince you that I love only you?" she murmured into his skin, and she lipped at his throat before nibbling her way along his collarbone. He sighed and closed his arms around her.

"Baby," he replied, his voice low and rough, "the day I can say no to you is the day the last light'll go out in Vegas, dig?"


	15. Chapter 15

Somewhere in the afterglow of their lovemaking, she remembered. Not her previous life, of course, which steadfastly eluded her. But she remembered a clear Mojave evening on the roof of the Tops, talking with Benny about the days before the Strip, when the Chairmen were the Boot Riders and every day was an effort to stay alive. "Live in the moment" was the catchphrase of the day, he'd explained, but once in a while, every once in a blue moon, somebody might find someone they wanted to think about tomorrow with. With no tomorrows guaranteed, the tribes never adopted anything as strict as marriage, but a ritualistic exchange of an earring or bracelet or other simple bauble at least showed everyone that the wearer was off-limits. He'd always liked the idea, he said, of showing off that possessiveness, that pride, if he ever found a woman who was good enough to suit him.

And here his voice had become so quiet Honor had to strain to hear him, and he couldn't meet her eyes as he told her that the joke was on him, that not only did he want everyone and their uncle to know that she was his, he wanted them to know that he was hers, as well.

_As long as you want me._

_I can't imagine_ not _wanting you._

But if she _did_ have a previous commitment...how did that work? Did she need to honor a promise she couldn't remember making? Or could she glibly run back home to the safety and fun of the Strip and ignore the lives in DC she might be disrupting?

She turned toward Benny, solidly asleep and peaceful. How much would it disrupt the Mojave, the Strip, for "the Courier" to leave? Half the people around voiced concerns about Benny being in charge of Vegas, of any one member of any one family having that much control, but felt reassured that as long as the Courier was involved, leadership would be fair.

But here in DC, they told her, she'd been known as "the Lone Wanderer," so dubbed by a local radio broadcaster, and was looked upon here much as she was in the Mojave. Cass was right, she decided; she just couldn't turn away from a sob story, and apparently she'd always been that way. So which wasteland should she embrace, and which one, abandon? She was so happy, so at home on the Strip...was it just selfishness that tried to draw her back?

Benny shifted against her in his sleep. No. It was Benny. And her friends. And the Chairmen. Her family. The Strip was home; she just hadn't known it until she'd gotten there.

So what did that make DC?

_What did that make Charon?_

In spite of her swirling thoughts, she finally drifted off, one of Benny's heavy arms slung comfortably across her hips as she curled against him.

~#~

The next morning they said goodbye to Reilly with promises to find her for proper farewells before they left DC. James departed the group for the local doctor's office to make arrangements for any medicines or equipment Devlin might need, leaving Arcade to accompany Honor, Benny and Charon to try to find Cass. They headed for Gob's to see if she'd passed out there, or possibly left word with someone if she left.

She met them coming down a ramp toward a building labeled "Craterside Supply." "Morning, lazy butts," she greeted them in a tone far too chipper for the hour.

"Do you _ever_ get hungover?" Arcade asked.

"Why are you so cheerful? It's fucking six in the morning"

Benny put his hands in his pockets and grinned at her. "You got laid."

Cass wriggled and shrugged in a way that casually accented her breasts. "You damn well got that right, city boy." She fell in beside Honor as the troupe headed back down the ramp to meet up with James. "That Gob is a sweetheart."

Charon rumbled, "You slept with Gob?"

"Yeah. So?"

Charon shrugged one massive shoulder. "I hope you didn't make him any promises you don't intend to keep."

"Why?"

"For one thing, Gob is quite young, by ghoul standards. Not a child, but...perhaps naive.

"For another, I am under a promise to protect him from any harm, physical or otherwise."

"Well, don't worry, big guy," Cass replied, punching Charon playfully on the shoulder. "I didn't write any IOUs this body can't cover."

Charon rolled his eyes. "Charming."

Benny dropped back to walk next to Charon. "So who made you promise to keep an eye on him?"

Charon indicated with a nod, "Honor. He was her first friend after leaving the vault." Honor was watching him over her shoulder as he spoke, and he added, "Moira Brown, the owner of Craterside Supply, is also a friend of yours"

"Anyone else I should know about?"

"You are on good terms with the sheriff, Lucas Simms, especially after defusing the bomb and saving his life."

"Saving his life?" Benny repeated. "That does tend to give a guy a fondness."

"Or in your case," Cass said, "an erection."

Arcade sighed. "Behave, children."

"You are also friendly with men named Billy Creel and Leo Stahl, and on polite terms with nearly everyone else in town."

"That's a lot of men you're on 'friendly terms' with, Pussycat."

"She is- was- lovers with none of them."

"Then what the hell did she do all day? Or did she used to drink?"

"Not everyone thinks drinking is 'something to do all day.'"

"Gannon, you wouldn't recognize fun if it ran up your pant leg and sucked your dick."

"No, I'm pretty sure I would know that was fun."

"Arcade!"

"Sorry, Honor. I guess Cass brings out the bawdy in me."

"I'm surprised you have any bawdy in you," Cass said, grinning.

Honor skipped over the comment. "You don't have to apologize. You just caught me- off guard." She stopped beside the town's little clinic and took a moment to look over the settlement.

"You remember anything?" Benny asked gently.

"Not a goddamned thing." Dogmeat whined and bumped her hand with his head. She scratched his ears. "Sorry, pup. No offense."

A slight but steady flow of people moved around the center of town, and a short, rough-looking man- a merc, perhaps, Honor thought- stopped beside the walkway and called up to her. "Well, look who decided to _honor_ us with her presence again!"

A woman outside the nearby restaurant (the Brass Lantern, according to the sign) sneered at him. "Aren't you the clever wordsmith."

The merc ignored her. "What's that, a fuckin' Enclave robot? You bring that shit here so they can spy on us?"

"There's Enclave here?" Arcade asked

Honor reached up and brushed ED-E's casing. "Charon? Do we know this guy?"

The short man grimaced. "What's that supposed to mean? What're you asking _him_ for?"

"Probably for permission to kill you," Cass said cheerfully.

"That a fact?" He hoisted his rifle. "I been waiting for that."

The woman at the restaurant spoke up again. "So've a lot of us, Jericho."

The man named Jericho looked back at her finally, then replaced his rifle in its scabbard. "Hey, all in good fun. You know me, Jenny."

"Yeah, I know you." Jenny nodded at Honor. "But she doesn't know anybody. Word is she got shot out west, and doesn't recall anything before it."

"Good news travels fast," Benny mumbled.

"She's liable to kill you," Jenny continued at Jericho, "since she can't remember what a pillar of our community you are."

"Especially if you harass her eyebot," Arcade deadpanned.

"Yeah," Jericho said, starting to lean away from the walkway, "or that fucking zombie."

Benny and Cass flung their arms out and wrapped them around Honor, but she still managed to get her hand on the stock of her rifle before they pinned her arms. Jericho's eyes widened and he took two quick steps back. Honor might still have wrestled free and gone after him if the door to the clinic hadn't opened and her father stepped outside.

Seeing his daughter struggling at being restrained- by Benny, no less- brought him up short. "What's going on here?"

"Honor's just getting reacquainted with her old neighbors," Arcade replied calmly as Honor stopped fighting and Cass and Benny released her. Jericho had wisely taken the opportunity to make his escape during the distraction "Seems some people in town don't like her as much as we do. There's just no accounting for taste."

Jenny called over to James, "It was just Jericho being an ass."

James nodded; apparently, that explained everything, and even excused Benny manhandling his daughter. "Well, then. Everything's all settled here. Dr. Devlin will be arriving tomorrow by vertibird from the Commonwealth."

"Did you say 'Devlin'?" Arcade asked.

"Yes. He's agreed to stay here in town as long as he's...I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?"

Arcade was frowning. "It's probably nothing, but...have you met this man?"

"Yes, but only briefly, and it was decades ago. Years before Honor was born, actually."

"He's not from out west, is he?"

"Originally, I believe, yes. Why? What does this have to do with anything?"

Arcade's frown had only deepened. "I think he might be someone my father knew. What's his specialty?"

"Neurology, brain trauma, and chronic pain disorders." James turned to Honor. "Perhaps he can also help you regain your memory."

"Probably not many physicians named Devlin who specialize in those fields..."

"Not many physicians who specialize in that field, period," James agreed. "We were lucky to find someone willing-"

Arcade turned to Charon, his eyes widening. "Oh, my _god._" He spun first to Honor, then back to James. _"Contract_- you- does he know about Charon?"

"Does he- what? Why?"

Honor began to tense. "Arcade-"

"Did you mention Charon to him at all? Was any mention made- anything at all?"

"No. Why would I? He has nothing to do with anything."

Arcade exhaled in relief. "Thank God. But-" he addressed Honor and Charon- "I think you should stay out of sight for the first few days he's here, Charon. Until we can be sure."

"Sure of _what?_" Honor asked.

"Yeah. I think we should discuss this somewhere more private, and possibly, as Honor would say, with some alcoholic assistance."


	16. Chapter 16

They seated themselves around Honor and Charon's living area, and Arcade began. "Devlin- if it's the same man- was in the Enclave. That's how my father knew him."

"Your father was with the Enclave?" James asked.

"Yes. My mother and my father's friends mentioned Devlin on more than one occasion, and didn't seem to think very highly of him. I found out bits and pieces over time. Devlin was one of the doctors in charge of a project back east in the Commonwealth 'designing perfect operatives.' Charon..." He met Charon's eyes.

Charon stiffened and Honor reached out to take his hand. He let her.

"It has to be the same project. It has to be. The subjects were bound to a contract- whether it was held by a government, a platoon, an individual- the subject was brainwashed to perform combat and related duties as ordered, without question, and with little to no regard for his or her own safety. Devlin complained he'd gotten sent back west because the project was falling apart. The senior madman in charge had gotten obsessed with the idea of only using ghouls as subjects. They'd had great success with one...you. You were going to truly be their perfect soldier: tougher than a non-ghoul human, stronger, easier to heal and with greater pain tolerance; and if you survived, your contract- _you_- could be passed down for _generations_." Arcade looked ill as he spoke. "The procedure, the investment of time, effort, money- was exactly the same for ghoul or non-ghoul. The return on investment- provided the subject survived his assignments and the goddamned _procedure_- was exponentially greater with a soldier who could live for centuries." He paused. Charon's expression remained unreadable, while Honor was wiping tears from her eyes.

"The problem, of course, was that they had to obtain their 'subjects' as children, and you know how rare it is to..." He shook his head. "You know that part. The project was disbanded shortly thereafter. And your contract got out of Enclave hands, obviously. I'm so sorry, Charon."

Charon stood, releasing Honor's hand. "Thank you for the warning," he told Arcade, then strode to the front door and left the house without another word.

Honor was out of her chair and outside after him almost before the door had closed.

"Charon!" She caught his arm as he reached the walkway a few yards from their door. "Charon. What can I do? How do I help? Please tell me what you need me to do."

He did not look at her. "Benny needs assistance. If this Devlin can help-"

"No. There are other ways. Other doctors."

"If it is the same man," he said, finally looking down at her, "you know how skilled he is. It wasn't easy to...create us."

She began crying again. "Charon. Give me the word, and he'll never come here. Or tell me to let him come, and I'll blow his brains out when he does. _Please._ Tell me what _you_ need me to do."

He looked as if he might simply stalk away, but at last his stance softened and he looked, truly looked, into her eyes. "Benny needs help," he repeated softly. "You know that better than anyone. And not just any doctor can help him. You should take the assistance that he's offering."

She bit her lower lip, then said, "Arcade's a good man."

He frowned. "I know he is. He must be, to mean so much to you."

"Thank you. I believe his father was a good person, too, and the other people in his squad. So, what if...what if Devlin's no longer loyal to the Enclave? People can change, right?"

"Yes. I suppose so."

"If he has- if he realizes how horrible his work was- do you think he could help _you?"_

He narrowed his eyes. "Help me with what?"

"Help- un-brainwash you. Disconnect you from your contract."

He studied her face carefully. "You wish to release me from your employ?"

"No! I mean, yes, sort of, but-" She spluttered to a halt and waved her hands in front of her. "Let me start over. I don't want you to go anywhere. I- I don't want you to...leave me." She blushed, but continued. "But I hate the thought that you're only with me because of some scrap of paper. You should be able to go where you want, do what you want." She took his hands, her fingers tiny next to his. "You should be your own man."

"My employers have dictated many of my actions," he said, "but they have dictated none of my thoughts." He gave her the tiniest of smiles. "I have always 'been my own man.'" He started to let go of her hands, but hesitated. "You, more than any of the others, have allowed me to speak and act on those thoughts. For that, I thank you."

She closed her eyes and fell forward into a hug around his midriff. After a moment, he rested his hands gingerly on her shoulder blades. She mumbled something unintelligible into the leather of his armor and he tried not to imagine that it sounded like, _"I love you."_

~#~

If there was anyone not on tenterhooks awaiting Devlin's arrival, they weren't making themselves known. He would have had an overly anxious welcoming party even without Arcade's forewarning. But if he was surprised by the small mob that greeted him when he got to Megaton, he hid it well. In fact, besides Charon, Benny was the only one of the group not there when he arrived.

Honor sure as hell was there, in her favorite leather armor and with a rifle on her back.

James managed introductions and directed to group toward the saloon, the only public place large enough to hold them all, and Honor went back to the house..._her_ house, she reminded herself reluctantly...to get Benny. Truthfully, Benny should have been able to meet with Devlin alone, but they found themselves a bit short on trust at the moment. The more opinions they could get of Devlin's behavior while they spoke, the better.

They trudged across town together, both silent, the tension around them suffocating. She'd never felt this tense around Benny before, even when she hadn't known him as anything except a man who'd tried to kill her. She hated it.

They arrived at Gob's to hear Devlin telling them that he'd heard a great deal about James and Catherine and Project Purity, and was absolutely pleasant as the two latecomers were introduced. Barely had James gotten his name out when Benny spoke up brightly. "So, you're Enclave?"

Arcade choked on his drink and Honor smacked her hand to her forehead.

Devlin took it in stride. "I was. Many years ago. It's where I received my training."

_In what?_ Honor wanted to snarl, _Brainwashing and torture?_ But she held the words back.

"In what?" Benny asked. "Brainwashing?"

"Do you even have an off switch for that mouth of yours?" Cass asked.

"Baby, the things I do with my mouth are no one's business but Honor's."

"So, that would be a 'no,'" Arcade said.

"Ah." Devlin nodded to himself. "My unfortunate reputation precedes me.

"Obviously, you value honesty," he continued, addressing Benny and ignoring a bark of laughter from Cass, "so I'll be blunt. When I was younger and ambitious and stupid, I did some things that, upon reflection now, were reprehensible. They should have seemed reprehensible then, and if I could go back I wouldn't do them, but as I said I was young and ambitious and stupid, my judgment further clouded with patriotic indoctrination. In short, I was an idiot." He paused to take a drink from the glass in front of him.

Cass took the opportunity to brace her chin on her hand and lean toward Benny, locking eyes with him. "Hm, does that sound familiar?"

"Cass," Honor said, "please go play with Gob."

With a grin, Cass stood. "Call me if you need me, sweetie."

Devlin actually smiled at the women's byplay as Cass left the table and headed for the bar. "So now I just try to undo as much damage as I can that this world causes. It is, frankly, my way of trying to atone for all the harm I've done."

Benny rapped his fingers against the table in a rough staccato, all traces of levity gone. "And what exactly is this therapy supposed to entail?"

"Well, we put you in an autodoc, get an initial assessment of the damage and its effects, and set about righting it, most likely with a combination of targeted deep-muscle stimpak injections and sessions in the autodoc."

"Sounds like it'll take awhile." A bit of the shine was back in Benny's dark eyes, but Honor easily saw the depths of unease behind it.

Devlin smiled and nodded. "Depending on the extent of the damage, it can. Since, according to your physician-" he gestured to Arcade- "you need the most advanced programming in autodocs that the OSI has to offer, I'm guessing that the treatment necessary to heal your nervous system alone will take weeks. If there's lasting damage to your musculoskeletal system- and with torture victims, one can almost be assured that there is- you can add a couple of weeks to that."

Honor opened her mouth to question him further, but Benny gave a final rap on the table and leaned forward, hand extended. "I'm in this shindig. When do we start?"

Devlin shook his hand as Honor looked back and forth between them, her brow furrowed in concern. "We can start first thing in the morning."

After a few more minutes of formalities and informalities, the group broke up, and Honor practically dragged Benny to the farthest corner of the saloon. "Don't you want to discuss this first before committing to it? You trust this guy already?" She gestured back toward where they'd been sitting.

Benny soothed her wrinkled brow with his thumb. "Baby, I trust just about nobody but you."

"Then _why?_ We could talk to him longer, watch him for a few days-"

"This is the quickest way to find out."

She frowned at him, her expression changing to horror as she realized what he had done. "Oh, Benny. Don't. Don't do this."

He cocked his head. "It's the best way to know, Pussycat."

"At what expense? _You?"_

"Sometimes ya gotta roll the dice."

"This isn't gambling, and we're not talking about losing a few caps here. You're risking your _life_, for christsakes."

Benny looked her in the eyes, his expression suddenly deadly serious. "You think this guy can do any worse to me than Caesar's already done? If he doesn't strap me down and cut me open, it'll be an improvement." He chucked her under the chin with his forefinger. "Don't worry, babycakes. Whatever this guy dishes out, I can take. And if he's on the level, then Charon benefits, too, and so do you. It's a win-win."

"There's no such thing as a win-win," Honor muttered as they left the saloon, "there's only win-and-sucks slightly less than losing."


	17. Chapter 17

As the weeks became a month, then more, they established their routine. Simms granted Devlin use of a vacant house next to the Brass Lantern, and there he set up his office. He offered to see anyone in Megaton who might want his help, and soon had a small practice thriving. Honor herself, as well as through Gob and Nova, kept careful track of public opinion regarding Devlin, but general perception of him stayed positive. She kept a hawk's eye view of him as he worked with Benny, of course, pleased that he hadn't protested her presence at all but wary enough of him to never go unarmed. If he proved to be the slightest danger, she was keyed up and ready.

Lightening Honor's mood slightly was the fact that Gob and Cass were still carrying on their whirlwind romance, much, apparently, to Nova's consternation. Honor dismissed Nova's jealousy entirely, figuring she should have realized how sweet Gob was while she had the chance at him; Honor had enough "what ifs" hanging over her own head with their harsh lessons to feel sorry for someone else having one.

Gob commenting that it was no wonder a friend of Honor's would have no prejudice against ghouls pretty much highlighted the harshest of those lessons and prompted her to finally talk to Benny about Devlin...or, more to the point, about Charon.

She didn't have to actually ask him; he could read her like print. One day when they were getting out of bed to see Devlin he looked down at her while he was dressing. "What's got your lovely forehead furrowed, Pussycat? Still worried about the doc?" He sat on the bed next to her. "I think he knows what he's doing, baby. I do feel better. And you know I'm sleeping better," and here he nuzzled her temple, "when we actually sleep." She smiled, which of course was exactly what he was going for. "It's working. I think you should talk to Charon."

She cast her gaze down, and after a moment, nodded. "Okay."

Benny wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "You're afraid that if he's not tied to that contract, he'll amscray."

She frowned and shook her head. "He's his own person. He should be able to do what he wants. And I have you. I don't need- - I mean- - I want you, I don't- -" She squeezed her eyes shut against tears of frustration and Benny drew her in to him.

"You know, dollface, I worried you might think I was getting in good with Devlin to set Charon up and get him out of the way. I shoulda known you'd be afraid of what would happen if Devlin _was_ legit." He kissed her hair and rubbed her back soothingly. "I'm sorry, Pussycat. I shoulda thought."

She gave a sharp laugh. "All you've been going through, and you're apologizing to me? No." She raised up, wiping at her eyes. "You're better, and I'd have sacrificed anything for that. If Charon chooses to go to him, and gets set free of that damn piece of paper, then that's just a bonus. Even if it means he leaves."

Benny smiled sadly. "He won't, Pussycat. When the choice is his, he still won't be anywhere but at your side."

Honor wrapped her arms around her knees and watched him as he left their bed and finished dressing, pulling on shirt and jacket both- - as at home in the hot Mojave- - not to ward off chill, but to cover the scars. He shot her a reassuring grin and headed out. She pulled on her own clothes, but hesitated by the bedroom door. What she felt for Charon was...complicated.

But what she felt for Benny- - what _should_ have been complicated- - was effortlessly simple.

She picked up the bundle from Shady Bear's lap and closed the door behind her.

~#~

Benny had gone ahead to Devlin's to wait for her, leaving Honor and Charon alone except for Dogmeat and the two robots. She found Charon in the kitchenette, putting down a bowl for the dog she couldn't remember.

"So...Devlin seems to be doing a good job," she began as he straightened.

"So I gathered. Otherwise you would have killed him by now."

She frowned, trying to decide if he was serious or not, but truthfully, if Devlin had hurt Benny in any way, she _would_ have killed him. "So, you know, if you wanted to go to him..."

Charon straightened further and became, if possible, even more impassive. "To see if my 'programming' can be undone."

"Yes." She waited, but he said nothing; his fingers flexed, though, the only outward sign of any conflict. "What is it? You know you can tell me..."

He held out a moment longer, then sighed, his shoulders drooping. "May I be forthright?"

"Of course, always. Please."

He considered carefully, then asked, "If I am released from my contract- if _you_ release me- what am I to do?"

"Do? What do you mean? You can do anything you like."

He frowned. "But what if...I do not wish to leave your employ?"

In spite of Benny's assurances, this still took her aback. "You mean, even without a contract? Why?"

He looked down at the floor.

She stepped closer. "Charon, why?"

He refused to look at her. "I cannot tell you why."

She held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Help me here. Please, tell me what's going on."

"I cannot."

_"Why not?"_

He closed his eyes. "It is too late to tell you."

His voice was soft, almost timid, and she realized what she was doing. "You never have to tell me anything, Charon. I just want you to be able to do what you want. Your reasons are your own- they're none of my business."

"Of course they are." Before she could argue, he continued, "Would you go with me to see Devlin?"

Surprised, she said, "Of course. Anything you want...but are you sure I can help?"

"Not to assist with the therapy," Charon said. He took a moment to consider his wording again. "When we were...conditioned...part of that conditioning rendered us unable to act against our 'programmers' in any way. Contract or no."

"Oh. So if Devlin does turn out to be an evil bastard..."

He gave a solemn nod. "I will need you to protect me." As an afterthought, he added, "Please."

She wrapped her arms around him, leaving him to pat her shoulders awkwardly. "Of course, Charon. I'd do anything to protect you."

He mumbled an affirmative, but she felt the packet with the ring Benny had gifted her pressed between them as she held him, and she hoped she wasn't lying.


	18. Chapter 18

After she saw Benny home from Devlin's, Honor and Charon headed out. They greeted Sarah at the counter outside the Brass Lantern (Honor had been pleased to note that at least one of her friends was always present in Megaton's "central plaza" when Benny was with the doctor, too) and headed into the building next door. Devlin looked up from his small desk as they entered. "Ah, Miss Meservey, what can I do for the two of you?" He looked back and forth between them, and before she could answer, he focused solely on Charon. "Oh...oh, my god."

Honor bristled and had to fight the urge to go for her rifle, though Charon remained immobile beside her- frighteningly so. "You recognize him, Dr. Devlin?"

Devlin stood slowly and took a halting step toward them. "Yes. Of course I do...Charon." He swallowed. "I always thought that was a cruel name to give a child...such as yourself."

Honor glanced quickly at Charon, but still he said nothing, the expression in his eyes unreadable, so again she took point. "Crueler than what you did to him? You and your 'associates.'"

Devlin shook his head. "No. God, no." He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. Honor looked first to Charon, and now he met her eyes. He arched his brow at her almost imperceptibly and she sighed in relief; he was still "there," still responsive. She took the proffered chair and Charon stepped up to stand at her shoulder. Normally she would have urged him to sit beside her as an equal, but she realized what the gesture meant: he was informing Devlin that, whatever Devlin's intentions, Charon looked to _her_ for his orders and no one else. Devlin nodded his understanding and returned to his own chair. "I always wondered what became of you...of all of you. I managed to track down several, but...always too late. I was always chasing graves. You, on the other hand, I heard plenty about for awhile, up until your contract apparently came into the possession of some nomad slavers. I heard nothing about you after that." He paused, but neither of them offered to fill in any blanks. "So now I take it that his contract has been passed into _your_ hands."

Honor shrugged. "You would know how that works."

He nodded, then after a beat, he asked, "Are you here to kill me?"

Honor shrugged again, taking a perverse pleasure in Devlin's quiet fear, blissfully unaware of that facet of her temper her father shared. "Is Benny's treatment finished?"

Devlin smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Yes."

"Well, then. If you're trying to make up for all the evil you've done...what can you do for Charon?"

It took a moment for Devlin to catch up, to realize he wasn't going to die and was instead being sought for treatment. His eyes widened. "You mean, you-" he turned to Charon- "you would give me the chance to try to undo what we did?"

Charon answered. "That is the idea."

Devlin took a moment to compose himself. "I'm sorry. I always hoped I'd have the chance to make it up to one of the children we...tortured...but I never thought I would." He reached out to shake Charon's hand and Honor surreptitiously checked her pipboy. Devlin's biometrics read friendly, and she nearly sobbed with relief. "Thank you for giving me this chance."

Friendly or no, Honor felt a warning _was_ in order. She pulled her rifle and laid it across her lap. "Don't fuck it up."

~#~

Honor trusted the reading on her pipboy but still couldn't bring herself to get very far away from Charon just yet, and she managed to catch Cass before she left the Lantern. They sat at the counter outside and she told her what little she knew so far- that Devlin still seemed to be on the up and up; that she had left Charon with him, which spoke volumes as far as Cass was concerned; and that he'd declared Benny's treatment concluded. She also told her about her decision that morning to pick up the ring, and what it entailed.

Cass paused mid-drink and cut her eyes over at Honor. She finished swallowing, smacked the glass back onto the counter, and thought hard before asking, "And you're sure that's the right decision?"

Honor turned toward her and leaned back on the counter to take a good look at her. "Cass. You know how I feel about Benny. How can you even question this?"

Cass glanced over at Devlin's house and back to her.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I care about Charon. I do. But Benny, I..."

Cass let her trail off. "What? You 'what' him? You're always spouting off about how much you love him. Why the shyness all of a sudden?" She turned her head toward Devlin's again. "Afraid he'll come out and hear you declaring your undying love for someone else?"

Honor turned back to her own drink. "No. I just don't want to hear you tear me up over it again."

"Sweetie. Please. We're just worried about you."

"I know. I heard you the first five thousand times."

Cass held out her hands. "Fine. Tell me what we can do, then. Tell me how we can help you."

"I don't need help." Honor flexed her fingers on her glass before looking at Cass. "I don't need help, not with this. You know how I feel about Benny. Charon-" She paused while Cass cocked an eyebrow. "Charon is...complicated."

Cass snorted. "Ya got that right."

"But whatever I might have felt about him before- - that's gone. I don't remember- -"

"I know you don't. But god, Honor, the way you act around him...when Benny got stabbed at the Tops, and you just leaned into Charon like you'd known him all your life..._some_ part of you remembers him. You have to."

"I've tried," Honor replied quietly. "God help me, I've tried. I know he's been important to me. _Is_ important to me. And apparently, I'll never know why."

Cass stared into her drink. "Jesus, girl."

"Ya got that right." She tried to smile but gave up. "All right, I say I don't need help. What help do you think I need?"

"A head shrink." Before Honor could tell her to be serious, she said, "I think you should at least wait to see if this Devlin guy can get Charon free of his contract. And then you should find out for sure how he feels about you. And how you feel about him when he's a free agent."

"Why? What difference will it make? If I loved him before, I don't remember it now. Any feelings I have for him now- - as far as my poor brain is concerned, I haven't even known him that long, and I've been with Benny for- -" She started to say "a year," but realized the impact of their relationship went far beyond that. "For as long as I can remember." She spread her hands. "What would you have me do?"

"Well, after that, I'd suggest you see the doc yourself."

"Me? What for?"

Cass looked at her as if for the first time. "To see if he can fix your brain, you lunatic. Get your memory back."

Honor sat quietly for a moment before answering. "Arcade says the tissue is gone."

"The Followers don't have access to this guy's technology. Maybe-"

She shook her head. "I don't want it back."

Cass set her drink down. "I know I heard you wrong. You don't want it back?"

"That's what I said."

"You mean, you don't want to remember anything?"

"I wish I could remember my friends, remember things about Charon-" she didn't add that there was plenty about her relationship with Charon she actively hoped she'd never remember- "but I don't need to remember. The past is...past."

"Your past makes you who you are."

"I know who I am. And that me has to live in the present, and hopefully have plans for the future. I was apparently pretty miserable here, and bitter. I don't want that bitterness to be part of who I am. I love Benny, and I love the friends I have now. I don't want to learn anything that could change my life."

"You think something could change how you love Benny?"

"No. You're twisting my words, Cassidy," she said in a mock warning voice.

Cass stared at the countertop, thinking. "Benny's a looker," she agreed. "He's very pretty. _Very_ pretty. Real nice ass, too." She took a drink. "But Charon's the solid choice."

"Why? How do you know?"

"Honor, honey, for one thing he's never tried to kill you."

"That we know of." She smiled, but it faded quickly. "And do you really still think that Benny doesn't love me?"

Cass took a long pause before answering. "No. I guess not. Not after Arcade- - well, he said why they put Benny through what they did, and that he wouldn't give you up. So I guess we've run out of arguments there." She lifted her eyes to Honor's. "But sweetie, we just don't want to see you hurt."

"And I don't want to _be_ hurt." The sound of Devlin's door opening drew her from her seat. She hugged Cass around the shoulders. "All I can do is the best I can do. We'll just have to see how things work out." She stepped behind Cass's stool toward the main path to wait for Charon, but leaned in to murmur in her ear as she moved around her. "And if you think Benny's pretty now...you should see him naked." She kissed Cass on the temple as the redhead grinned wolfishly into her drink.

~#~

Benny had kept Honor informed about his physical progress, which didn't surprise her. Charon told her nothing of his deprogramming, which didn't surprise her, either. So when he came to her and told her it was time to test its effectiveness, to destroy his contract, it caught her a little flat-footed.

And terrified.

What if she had set this in motion, and it didn't work? What if destroying his contract did something horrible to his psyche, or- or-

She knew she must have cared greatly for him before to have become so comfortable with him, to be so fond of him now. If she'd caused him harm, how could she forgive herself?

She tried not to let her fears show.

She did allow herself to show relief at her former self's sensibility when told that the contract, that slip of paper with such profound importance, was not in her house, or even anywhere in Megaton. While Charon hit Craterside to supply their trip and Benny went to gather up the rest of the Vegas entourage, she packed a duffel for herself. ED-E floated along behind her and Dogmeat trailed at her feet as she moved around the house, collecting up anything that looked useful. She tossed in one of the teddy bears for good luck, as usual, and was inspecting a gorgeous rifle from one of the house's lockers when someone knocked at the door. Dogmeat whined and ED-E chirped curiously, and Wadsworth hovered on the stairs. She wondered what kind of guests usually knocked at her door, from Dogmeat and Wadsworth's reactions. She opened the door to her father.

Half a memory nagged at the back of her thoughts, but just as quickly, it was lost. "Oh- hi. Come in." She stood aside.

James stepped through the door and hugged her. She returned the gesture, albeit awkwardly. After a moment's further awkwardness, they sat.

"Arcade tells me you're going out to retrieve Charon's contract from...wherever it is."

"That's right."

"In order to destroy it."

"That's the plan."

"And that will tell you if his conditioning is truly broken?"

"Yes. So we're told."

He smiled sadly at her. "Nothing at face value, hm?"

She shrugged and smiled back. "I find there's very little in the world that can be judged on its face."

"The best laid schemes of mice and men-"

"- gang aft agley," she finished, and then tried not to obsess over how she knew the quote.

"When you've done this...provided it goes according to plan...you'll be returning to the Mojave?"

"Yeah." At his frown, she reminded him, "That was always the idea."

"I know. I suppose I hoped- well, it doesn't matter what I hoped."

She closed her eyes. "That I'd remember everything once I got back here, and wouldn't be able to bear leaving."

"Something like that." He shifted in his seat. "I love you dearly, Honoria. You mean the absolute world to me. And everything I've done, since the minute you were born, was meant to make a better life for you. I need you to know that."

Honor felt her shoulders tense. Dogmeat had grown very still beside her, while ED-E seemed more agitated. Whatever was making her nervous- it wasn't just her.

"Honor, while we were in the Mojave, I did something..." He looked around himself as if searching for the right words. "To say I'm ashamed of it would be a gross understatement. I meant it for a greater good, for your good, but...I did something terrible.

"Honoria, honey, it's my fault we were taken by those Legion men. It's my fault Benny was...hurt."

She forced herself to be still, to be calm. "'Hurt.' You call that 'hurt.'" She had to pause before she began seething. "And how exactly was it your fault? Did you cause it?"

"I- spoke to someone, about removing Benny from your life. It wasn't supposed to be the Legion who took him, at least I don't think so. I certainly never meant for him to come to harm. They were simply supposed to get him away from you, to get you out of his sphere of influence."

She stood and stalked away, though in the tiny house she couldn't go far. ED-E followed her, his laser powering up quietly, and she heard Dogmeat's soft growls behind them. "How could you think-" She made herself breathe slowly and focus as she turned back to face him. It was a monumental effort. "You didn't know the Legion. You didn't know what they were capable of. But you had to know that whatever happened, it would hurt me."

"I thought he could be bought off, bribed or enticed to stay away from you. I had no idea what would happen- or how much he loved you. Does love you." He dropped his gaze to the floor.

"You had no right to- to _test_ him that way."

"I know that. And I am deeply, deeply sorry."

"Oddly, I don't care how sorry you are." She took another deep breath as ED-E hummed behind her, ready. "Who'd you talk to? About 'removing' Benny from my life?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell you."

"No, you _won't_. I don't see anything stopping you." She considered him a moment. "It's someone I know, isn't it? Someone I can get to, and kill. You think you're protecting them."

"Honoria-"

"It's Honor. I don't know who 'Honoria' is. Just for kicks, what would 'Honoria' do now? Would she kill you? Forgive you? Refuse to ever speak to you again?"

James regarded her sadly.

"You know, don't you? We've gone around like this before. Over Charon. Haven't we?"

His silence answered her.

"How did it end?"

"Honoria- Honor. Please understand-"

_"How did it end?"_

"We didn't speak for months...nearly a year. You wouldn't talk to me."

She took a step toward him. "And what had you done to Charon?"

"Nothing. I'd done nothing to him." He clasped his hands and turned his eyes to the floor again. "I expressed my unease to him about his relationship with you. And I...it's complicated."

She tilted her head in a cutting gesture. "I might be smart enough to understand. Try me."

He sighed. "The Enclave wanted Charon's contract. I didn't understand why at the time, but...they threatened a dear friend of yours to get it. I advocated turning it over to them. To be honest, I didn't know how deeply in love with him you were."

"With Charon?"

"Yes."

"And apparently you still can't tell when I love someone." She put her hands on her hips. "Who was it? Who do I know who'd betray Benny, who'd betray me?" She didn't add, _Besides you, obviously._

He shook his head. "As much as I love you, I can't tell you. It's as much to protect you as-"

"Me?"

"That's right. You _would_ kill him, wouldn't you?" He looked bereft. "When I left you in the vault, I was trying to spare you this life. Life as a killer. I didn't want _this_ to be what you would become."

"It was a man?"

"What?" He seemed genuinely surprised that, even after his heartfelt pleading, she still had only one thing on her mind.

He really had no idea, she realized, who _Honor_ was.

She also realized that, even if she had regained her memory, she would never again be Honoria.

And she didn't want to be. Whatever she'd been here in the Capital Wasteland, she was clearly never getting back. There was no past for her; there was only the future. No Honoria. Just Honor.

"A man. It was a man who betrayed us, who helped you get Benny tortured." She gestured to ED-E and he brought his gun to bear on James. "Because you're my father, and because I can't really remember you and how I might have felt about you once, I'm not going to kill you." She pointed at the door. "But if you _ever_ speak another word to me, it better be that name."


	19. Chapter 19

They came into the house, Arcade, Cass, and Benny laughing, Charon tolerating them silently, to find Honor curled up in a chair with one of her big teddy bears and ED-E and Dogmeat trying to comfort her.

Benny went to his knees next to her. "Baby, what's wrong? What happened?" And briefly, she told them.

Benny and Cass were clearly stunned. When she frowned at Arcade and Charon's rather different reactions, Arcade said, "He told you?" He fidgeted a tiny bit as he instantly became the center of attention.

"You knew?" Cass asked, her voice almost a whisper.

"He and Charon both did," Honor said, straightening in her chair. "Didn't you?"

"Uh-"

"So who was it? Who sold Benny to the Legion?"

"Well, thank god you don't think it was me." Arcade ran his hand through his hair. "Honor-"

"Wait. Stop." She turned to Charon. "_You_ knew in Goodsprings. Didn't you?"

Charon stood as if being stripped of rank by a superior officer. "Yes. We both found out there."

"And didn't tell me."

"Well," Arcade said, "I kind of thought it might be better if, you know, there was a continent between you and your father before you found out...I'm sorry, honey." He tilted his head toward Charon. "And I made Charon promise not to tell until I found out more about it."

She nodded. "Boone."

Cass gaped. "What?"

"It was Boone." She looked to Charon. "That's why you kept putting yourself between him and Benny. You were protecting Benny, just in case. Weren't you?"

"Yes."

She took a moment to blink back sudden tears. "Thank you."

He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

She turned back to Arcade, her eyes pleading. "When were you going to tell me?"

He spread his hands. "I don't know. I wanted to find out if there was more to the story. I guess I just didn't want to believe..."

"...that one of us could do something like that?" Cass asked. "Right there with you."

"Yeah," Benny said, "that's fair."

Honor touched her forehead to his. "Really? My god, darlin', after what you've been through-"

He took her hands. "We all just do what we think is best at the time. And some of us fuck it up, big." He brushed her cheek with his thumb. "And some of us are really, deeply grateful when we're given another chance."

She leaned into him and kissed him tenderly. "So, no killing?"

He shrugged. "Not just now. Give this one a pass."

Arcade shifted foot to foot. "Just to be clear...are you talking about me or Boone?"

Honor turned back to him, near tears. "Oh, Arcade. I don't blame you for looking out for us." She left her chair and bounded to him, wrapping him in a fierce hug. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I could ever make you think I might hurt you." She rubbed at her eyes. "I guess my father's right about what I've become."

Arcade hugged her back. "I didn't really think you'd hurt me. Seriously. And I'm equally sure Boone knows what he's surrendered by doing this."

"Hmph." She shook off the gloom; whatever would happen when next she saw Boone, she didn't have to worry about it now. Her only concern now should be getting them safely to the place where they'd secured Charon's contract. They were all going, at Charon's request to her: if the deconditioning hadn't worked, his reaction to the destruction of his contract would be unpredictable, and potentially violent. At the other extreme, he might shut down emotionally altogether. Therefore they might need all hands to subdue him, or carry him back to "civilization" safely. At any rate, her friends had agreed readily to assist. It made her grateful for her New Vegas family all over again.

The trip into the DC ruins was a bit more adventurous than traveling the Mojave after the second war on the dam, but no more so than their earlier trips around the region. Charon led them to a building that, to Honor, looked indistinguishable from all the other half-collapsed ruins in the city, but once they wound their way deep into the lower levels, she began to understand why they had chosen this place to secure Charon's contract. Security robots patrolled every hallway. Though the robots weren't hostile toward them, Charon assured her it was only because she and he had been granted clearance.

When they reached their goal, a vault-like room deep in the heart of the building, they were warmly greeted by a protectron. She was grateful Charon had explained why they were welcome there, otherwise the malfunctioning robot would have alarmed her. Under other circumstances, she couldn't imagine trusting Charon's contract to an unstable AI.

But after his assurances, she couldn't imagine placing it in safer hands. The robot gave them a warm hero's welcome and withdrew the contract from a safe with the utmost care. As he did, Charon murmured in Honor's ear that the safe also housed the Declaration of Independence. Her eyes widened as the robot turned back around and carefully placed the contract in her hands.

On the way back out of the building, she looked it over. For being such a binding, far-reaching contract, it was heartbreakingly short. Charon's life and well being, summed up in a few paragraphs on a single page.

They got all the way out to the broken road in front of the National Archives building before anyone spoke.

"So, what now?" Cass asked.

Honor looked to Charon and on a hunch, gestured the others on. When they were out of earshot, she handed him the contract. "It's your move, sweetheart."

His brow arched at the endearment, but he left it alone. "I do not know if I can." He held the contract stiffly, as if she'd handed him a dead radroach. Or her lingerie.

She dug out Benny's lighter and handed it to him. "Benny's lucky lighter. Well, it actually has more significance to us than that, but... He gave it to me just for this. If you're free of the thing, you can do it."

He glanced toward the others, who had stopped not far away. In case he became dangerous. "You should leave. You should stand with them. In case I-"

"You won't hurt me." She pushed his hand with the lighter toward the one with the contract. "Do it. Or don't. It's up to you; everything's up to you. But if you do it, I _will_ be with you, Charon. You can rely on that."

He met her eyes and they looked at each other somberly for a long moment. A flame sprung up in front of Honor's face, and she realized he had set fire to the contract without looking at it.

While looking at her.

He let it burn close to his fingers, then dropped it. They stood together and watched it curl to black ash between their feet. When the flame died he pressed out the embers with his boot.

Neither of them took their eyes off the smear of char for another long moment.

"How do you feel?"

"I- I do not know."

She risked looking up at him. "Charon?"

He looked up, too, meeting her eyes once more. "Yes?" She reached out her hands, low, and gingerly he offered his fingers to close her own around. She watched his emotions flash one to another. "What I could not tell you before..."

She tightened her fingers around his, her eyes tearing. "You don't need to say it. You don't need to say anything you don't want to." She made herself meet his eyes. "But I felt the same way about you, didn't I?"

He raised his chin. "I do not know."

"Yes, you do."

"I don't presume-"

"You know, Charon. I know you now. I know, and I don't even remember." She grinned crookedly at him, but it was a sad smile. "So what do we do?"

"You are happy with Benny."

"I must have been happy here," she replied, leaving off the _"with you"_ that nearly followed. The thought that she had ever loved anyone besides Benny left her feeling strange; she couldn't imagine having that same headlong, delightful passion for anyone else, especially in this colorless place. But she also knew Cass was onto something, that she felt far too close to him and too trusting of him for Charon to have been just another person in her life.

"No, not like you are now. You have a life in New Vegas- a normal life."

She wiped at her eyes, wiped the dust of DC from her mouth. "So what do we do? What- what will _you_ do?"

"I have not thought that far ahead," he replied, squaring his shoulders.

"All the time it took us to get here? What else could you have been thinking about?"

He seemed to lean forward without actually moving. "What would you have me do?"

"Charon, you're free now; it's up to you-"

Now he did step forward, so close she had to crane her neck to look up at him. "I asked you a question," he said softly.

She answered before she could change her mind. "I'd have you stay with me. I'd have you trailing along behind me back to the Strip like-" She cut herself off and squeezed her eyes shut.

She felt, as much as heard, the rumble of his response, so close were they. "You love Benny."

"Yes. Dearly."

"And he, you."

"Yes. He must." She smiled wryly.

"You do not wish to leave him."

"No."

"Then what purpose would I serve?"

"What purpose? What purpose do I serve you, now?"

He leaned closer, his scent a mix of leather, steel, and gunpowder. "I love you. That is purpose enough."

She hung her head. "I don't think I have the right to ask you to come with me. I'm being horribly selfish."

"Hm." He looked down at her in a way that made her nearly squirm. "I told you that the wastes owe you a great debt for getting the water purifier running."

She blushed and ducked her head.

"When you activated it, you knew that whomever stepped into the chamber would be subjected to potentially lethal amounts of radiation. You expected it to kill you. But you did not make me do it. You didn't even ask me.

"Afterward, I asked you why you didn't. It was foolish not to take advantage of my resistance under those circumstances. And you asked me in return how much radiation it takes to turn a sentient ghoul into a feral one. You refused to send me into the chamber in order to protect me, though you fully expected it to cost you your life.

"Never think you are selfish." He straightened a little. "I will not tolerate it."

Fighting back tears, she tipped forward to brace the top of her head against his chest. "Doesn't solve now."

"No, it does not."

"So what do we do?"

He raised his chin. "Continue on as before."

"What, and pretend this-" she gestured at the char on the ground- "never happened? This is monumental, Charon. You're a free man now, for the first time ever. We don't just ignore this."

He shrugged. "I do not wish to leave you...your employ."

"And I don't want you to leave. But I want you to stay with me because you want to stay, not because you think you have to be some kind of- hired hand."

"Hired gun."

"Missing the point."

"Hm. But whatever the arrangement, you do want me to stay with you. Or go with you, as you choose."

"Lord, yes."

"That is what I want, as well. Is that not enough?"

She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed fiercely. To her surprise, he gave a low, sad sounding chuckle. "What?"

"I was just thinking...your father tried so hard to keep you away from either of us." He nodded toward where Benny stood with the others. "And instead you wind up with both."

"Yay me." She grinned up at him gamely.

"We are neither the sort I would choose for my daughter, had I one."

"Really? Why not?"

He blinked down at her with genuine puzzlement. "We are both killers."

"So am I."

"But not out of choice."

"You didn't choose to be. And Benny couldn't help being born into his tribe instead of someplace more 'civilized.'"

"But now we know nothing else."

"Pfft. And you think I do?"

He cocked his head as he regarded her. "Don't worry. I do not intend to leave you for your own good. And I am certain I can speak for Benny and say the same. In fact, I don't think he would do anything for anyone's good except his own, and yours."

She smiled at him again and in spite of the dust on her face from the road and rubble, it was dazzling. "Well, then...come home with us. Please."

They took back up with the others and struck out north for Megaton. Benny hung toward the back of the group and Honor slowed her pace to walk beside him. "So," he asked her, "what's the verdict?"

"He's coming back home with us. If...well, I _need_ him to."

"'Us'?" Benny repeated. "As in, there's still an 'us'?"

She stopped, and so did he. "Of course there's still an us. Why wouldn't there be?"

"Oh, I don't know; because you love another man, one who didn't shoot you in the head?"

"Benny." She laid her hands on each side of his face. "I love a lot of people. But I am _in love_ with precisely one. You. Only you." He opened his mouth to argue, but she continued before he could. "Nothing's going to change that. Unless, you know, you cheat on me, or shoot me again. The usual things women worry about." She held his gaze. "Is it really all right with you if Charon comes home with us?"

He grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. "Babycakes, I'm just glad you're coming home willingly. I was afraid I'd have to kidnap you away from him. Wasn't sure how I was gonna pull that off, either. He's a big guy. And you-" He took her hand and they started walking again. "Well, I told you. You're a scrapper."

"That's one way of putting it." She squeezed his hand. "Of course I'm going home. Besides, we've got a lot to do."

"Like figure out what the hell the NCR did to blow off that hillside over the Long 15."

"Mm hm. And root out the rest of those sons of bitches."

She didn't have to specify which sons of bitches she meant.

"We takin' Dogmeat back with us? Think he'll get along with Rex?"

"Oh, definitely." She nodded ahead at Cass, who was saying something to Arcade and laughing boisterously. "I think the bigger question is whether we'll need to take Gob."

"Cass, settling down? Really, ya think?" He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers- chastely enough for a public display, but with a subtle sweep of his tongue tip that promised more when they were in private. "Well, stranger things have happened...like you fallin' for me. It's the Mojave, after all." After a glance around at the city ruins, he added, "So to speak."

She slung her arm around his waist and pulled him hard against her. "Where we're going? Naw, it's not just the Mojave...it's _Vegas_, baby."

They quickened their pace to catch up to the others.


End file.
